A Song for the Past
by GlimpseTheUnthinkable
Summary: Ten years has passed since Youko last walked the hallways of Lillian. Years flow by, people move on, but some things are too valuable to be discarded. When the road reaches a dead end, it is time to turn back, because not all bridges are burnt after all.
1. Save me

_Talent, hard work and graduation from Tokyo University; everything one needs for a successful life. Yet as Youko discovers a decade after walking the hallways of Lillian, there is something lacking. Time goes on, memories fade and some things have to be abandoned, but some fragments of the past are simply too priceless to be discarded. When the road approaches a dead end, it is time to turn back, because not all bridges are burnt after all..._

I have tried (and will try in future chapters) my best to capture the beauty of Marimite, the success is mixed and limited at best as my writing style is mostly quite different than what suits Marimite fics. I try to describe things more than I usually do, but it will remain to be seen whether I am able to translate the dreamy beauty of the series to this little story.

For those who will wonder, I admit that I may have made some very minor adjustments to the canon to suit my storytelling purposes.

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><p><strong>1. "Save me..."<strong>

On the plane from Hokkaido back to Tokyo, Mizuno Youko cursed her work for the hundreth time that day. The flights were relatively short, but she could not help wondering whether it had really been worth making such a trip just to attend some formalities with no other purpose than shaking hands with the big players in the field, all the while she had twisted her facial muscles to keep a falsely sweet smile on her lips. On the top of that, everytime she had looked in the other direction, she had been able to feel those salarymen raising their eyebrows at her, an unmarried woman who had already turned thirty. She could guess what they were thinking.

When she finally arrived to the Tokyo airport, she had to stop by a cafeteria to grab something to eat. The queue was like a gigantic boa, it writhed and twisted but never seemed to get any shorter. Youko clutched her handbag tighter. Closing her eyes, she drew a few deep breaths to calm herself down. Even amidst her turmoil she was amused by the fact that she, who usually was so cool and composed, still could not handle overtly crowded places. When people surged around her, when the noises became so dense and incomphrehensible and when at every turn there was someone she almost bumped into she felt as if she were drowning.

Eventually she got her sandwich and a cup of coffee. There were hardly empty seats in the cafeteria, but she was able to squeeze herself into a vacant chair beside a corner table. The woman occupying the seat opposite to Youko's raised her eyes curiously as the latter one sat down with her tray.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" Youko asked politely, her voice stable.

"No, by all means", the woman replied, smiling crookedly.

Youko noted there was something familiar with the blonde woman with ashen grey eyes, but she was too tired to think where she could have met her. Hardly giving the woman a second look, she attacked her sandwich wolfishly. Concentrating on eating, she tried to avoid thinking about tomorrow. No rest for the wicked, and it was certainly true of her. Work, work, work... There was no shortage of it. She would go to work early at eight o'clock and get back home after eight in the evening, and as opposed to most men, she did not have a wife waiting for her at home with a warm meal.

When she rose up and started to leave, she was startled to hear her own name being called in a feminine, yet softly muffled voice.

"Mizuno Youko."

It was only then that Youko realized that the voice was familiar, too.

She turned her gaze down on the woman in front of her. The woman had very un-Japanese blonde hair and indeed there was a western whiff in her looks, yet there was no foreign accent in her smooth speech. The woman was studying Youko intently with her large, grey eyes, and there was an almost coquettish grin on her lips.

"Have you become so important that you won't even recognize me anymore?"

There was a horrible feeling brewing inside Youko's stomach. Her heart had already realized, as opposed to her conscious mind, which was still clouded by confusion. So, for a moment she could do nothing but stand there, stunned.

"Satou Sei."

Satou Sei. The one she so often dreamt about. The one who embodied a whole period in her life, the one who was the epitome of all the things she had been forced or had voluntarily left behind. It had been a long time since she had last reminisced about Sei, but all the same, seeing the former Rosa Gigantea so unexpectedly took her breath away.

The White Rose had not changed very much. She still had her flirtatious smile, her voice was still constantly tinged with amusement, her face was as charming as ever. However, small wrinkles decorated her eyes as she was smiling.

"Yeah, it's me. Surprised?" Sei said as if they had just met yesterday.

It had been over a decade.

Youko rushed over to the other side of the table with several very ungraceful moves just to find herself tightly in her former classmate's embrace. People around them were turning to watch them, but for once she didn't give a damn.

"Save me, Sei", Youko whispered. "Please."

"It's a dog's life, I tell you", Youko said. "You go to work early in the morning and get back home when some people are already sleeping. And then there are these occasions in which you have to entertain your clients or bosses until midnight."

They had booked a taxi together and it was heading towards Youko's apartment. Sei had promised to come over, and Youko had been overjoyed. She still couldn't fully register it, having Sei, the real, live Sei, beside her, Sei's scent filling her nostrils and filling her with so many bittersweet memories that she was afraid she would faint at any moment.

"I can't say I'm surprised", Sei replied, giving Youko a meaningful glance. "You once made Sachiko give herself a break, but it seems you need someone to make you do the same thing right now."

When Youko thought about Lillian, she was surprised that she could recall only bits and pieces. She remembered the important things, but time had robbed the memories the details, the story had become so simplified that it could hardly be claimed to represent the real thing, if indeed memories ever could. She remembered the ginkgo nuts scattered all over the ground as if some higher force had planted them, she remembered the lonesome sakura tree, she remembered walking the seventeen-year-old Sei home with the latter one's Oneesama during that fateful Christmas Day.

The taxi speeded on, and a silence fell between the two now adult women. Looking at Sei's face, Youko could barely believe that it had really been so long. It felt perfectly natural to be with Sei. Ten years might have passed and they might have gone through several painful cataclysms in their lives, but there wasn't a trace of awkwardness between them. Unconscious of what she was doing, Youko slipped her fingers among Sei's.

"Wait", Sei suddenly told the driver. "Turn left in that junction over there."

"Where are we going?" Youko asked.

"Can't you guess?" Sei responded enigmatically.

They soon entered a relatively peaceful suburb with small, attractive houses. The metallic grey metropolis was being left behind, and once again, there was something so very familiar. The red tile wall, the small diner with a broken neon-light sign, the candy shop with a somewhat perverted name she had never noticed back then...

"Nothing has changed in ten years or so, has it?" the dark haired woman stated quietly.

Sei shook her head softly, smiling.

She told the taxi driver to wait, and she and Youko stepped out of the car. A gentle gust of wind tousled with their hair, and some autumn leaves floated past them. The slowly setting sun painted the reddish wall even more crimson. The colour was so abnormally intense that for a brief moment Youko actually believed the walls were stained with blood, but Sei's touch on her shoulder reminded her that there was nothing to fear.

"Did you just see a ghost?" Sei asked, grinning as usual.

Youko shook her head.

"Shall we go in?" she prompted.

A part of her felt a bit shy about entering the high school grounds, but when Sei grabbed her wrist and started pulling her towards the portcullis, she hardly had any choice other than to follow.

Lillian Girl's High School. A garden for maidens, as they sometimes used to call it, and Sei had always considered that a bit corny. Then again, she had never been your average maiden.

It was not yet very late, so passing through the gardens were some students, who gave the two unknown women nonplussed glances. Youko smiled to them as she used to when she still had been the all-powerful Rosa Chinensis. She wondered did Sei give the students the same flirtatious looks as during the latter one's Rose years.

Indeed, Lillian had not witnessed much change. The garden was immaculately groomed as always, there was this unique air of serenity as if nothing in the world could disturb the daily routines of these adolescent girls. Those students who passed them had tidy sailor collars and the plaits in their skirts were hardly visible. The people might have changed, but to an outsider time might have not passed at all.

Youko had not thought about where they were heading, yet instinctively she had a hunch where Sei was leading them. Not surprisingly, they were soon walking on the cobblestone road they had treaded so many times before.

"I wonder if there is anyone inside", Sei mumbled wistfully as they finally stood in front of the Rose Mansion.

"Even if there were, I don't think we should go in", Youko replied quietly.

Sei turned her head towards Youko, and their eyes met for the first time since their encounter at the airport.

Full stop.

Everything came into a standstill. Afterwards Youko could only guess whether the time had really stopped flowing or had she just been able to capture that moment in such a detailed manner that it actually caused the time to slow down as she registered everything she could see and hear during that passing moment which could not have lasted more than a few seconds.

Sei's glimmering eyes, her beautiful features that were exceptionally impressive after all those years Youko had not seen them, Sei's coy and devilishly gorgeous smile... The breeze was caressing them almost lovingly. The sakura tree beside the Rose Mansion was naturally not in bloom, but it actually highlighted its haunting beauty. The most of the branches were pointing towards the ground like wilted flowers, but Youko knew it would burst into life once again in the spring with more vigour than ever before. From the main building came distant chatter and laughter, and Youko would not have been surprised had Yumi suddenly appeared behind a tree shouting "Rosa Chinensis" and "Rosa Gigantea" with her enthusiastic voice.

The small niche of time in which they were captured was so full of fond memories, so full of languid nostalgia that Youko felt totally overwhelmed. She wanted to lie down on the lawn and stare at the sky until she lost all sense of time and until she forgot who she was and started drifting towards the perfect realm forever lost.

"Wake up, darling.", Sei whispered.

Youko shuddered. Sei had snuck so very close to her without her noticing, and Sei was virtually speaking into her ear. Sei's arms had also been wrapped around Youko, and the former Rosa Chinensis was more than glad to be held by the White Rose.


	2. An Angel's Grace

Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing, it has been a pleasure. Hopefully you will enjoy this second chapter too. The first two chapters seem to be quite packed of almost sentimental melodrama, so I hope you are not bothered with that. I might just have to restrain myself a little, although melodrama generally suits and stays true to Marimite very well.

Enjoy!

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><p><strong>2. An Angel's Grace<strong>

It was her third day in Hokkaido, and in the northernmost of the main islands of Japan winter was already approaching. The temperatures were getting frighteningly near zero, and Youko had made her usual mistake, not carrying with her warm enough clothes. Fortunately, she didn't have to endure the freezing weather all that much. She was, after all, a successful lawyer who had graduated from Tokyo University. The cold could not reach inside the luxury car assigned to her use.

Lying in her bed in a five-star hotel in Sapporo, Youko was thoroughly fed up with everything. She had kicked her high heels off her feet, unbuttoned her stainless, white blouse and untied her skirt from her waist. The clothes had urged her squirm for the whole day, but she had endured it all by biting her lip when there was no-one watching. Before the trip, she had actually held some tenuous hopes that she would have time for some sightseeing and meeting up with her old friends who had drifted to the north, but her hopes had been in vain. There were talks of merging between her firm and another company, and all the related chit-chat had kept her busy like nothing else could have ever had. Tomorrow she would be heading back to Tokyo. At least she would not have to wake up so damn early.

Later in the evening, when Youko felt revitalized enough to start feeling bored, she put on a blue jumper and ordinary jeans and decided to inspect the hotel's bar. Before going she stopped in front of the mirror to quickly catch a glimpse of herself.

For as long as she could remember, people had told her she had very formal features. "A distant beauty", they used to call her. "Impressive", they would describe her. Indeed, with her piercing eyes and regular features she was clear-cut to be a natural leader. She wore her hair just above her shoulders in a fashion which had not changed since her high school years.

The bar was located in the top floor of the skyscraper with a panorama view on the city. The lounge was oval shaped with the counter situated in the middle of the room, and Youko found herself sitting in in one of the tables beside the wall made of glass. She could see the city's lights glimmering beneath her like winking stars, and the lights were closest to stars Youko had seen in a long time. She had heard stories that in the countryside one could actually see millions of real ones during clear nights, but in Tokyo it was rare to see even a few.

Youko sighed and took a sip of her whisky. Even now, the sky was lit with artificial illumination. The light had a greenish tinge to it, and as a few misshaped clouds passed through the sky, Youko could vividly see a giant emerald-coloured clockwork machine suspended in the air, its cogwheels turning endlessly, seamlessly merging into each other. Although she had always told herself otherwise, in that very moment she felt more like those smaller cogwheels who dutifully obeyed the whims of the larger ones.

Youko shifted the whisky glass restlessly between her hands. She was feeling anxious for no apparent reason.

Perhaps it is the unfamiliar environment, she reflected, sweeping an undisciplined strand of her hair away from her face.

_No, this has nothing to do with me being in Sapporo._

During those past few evenings when she had only been able to lie in her bed, exhausted to the core but not calm enough to sleep, she had had simply too much time to think. She mostly had thought about her career, her aspirations and her dreams, if she still had them. The treadmill society, in which the road never ended regardless of how far you ran, was not one encouraging people to dream.

_Bring one feet in front of the other and repeat the process so many times until the hurting feet and the bleeding heart became so numb one could do nothing but carry on even if one suddenly wished otherwise._

Youko sighed. Such cynical thoughts did not belong in her head, and it was because of those dark musings that she knew she was really upset. She poured the remaining yellowish liquid in her whisky glass almost furiously into her mouth, and it made her grimace as the alcohol burned her throat like fire.

"I would like to have another one", she hailed at the bartender.

The bar was almost empty in the middle of the week, and the young man probably in his early twenties serving Youko her whisky seemed to be pleased with her presence. He tried to start some small talk and Youko smiled politely to his words, but she was simply too tired and disinterested to reply. The boy soon noticed this and returned to polishing wine glasses.

The whisky was starting to affect Youko, and she was getting warm. Once more she looked outside. In comparison with the bustling city, which was laid out beneath her in such clarity, she could not avoid feeling puny and somehow disconnected. The cars speeded through the broad streets, lights went on and off, people were arguing and making love and none of it concerned her.

Looking around the bar, she could see a middle-aged couple discussing something intently while holding hands, a fashionably dressed young woman with stereos and a boy probably just turned eighteen wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt. A mosaic world where every tile had a different colour.

At least the whisky is good, she thought.

It had a balanced taste, a solid mix of sweetness and smokiness which had an almost rejuvenating effect on her, who did not usually even like whisky very much. Now she was sipping the drink incessantly, craving more of the addictive substance with every gulp she swallowed. She had to exercise extreme self-control to stop herself from ordering a third glass.

She wanted to sleep.

She rose up abruptly and started staggering towards the elevator, her steps a bit unstable. Her head felt too heavy and too light at the same time, and it had nothing to do with the alcohol in her system.

* * *

><p>"After all your torment, have you even gotten rich?" Sei laughed.<p>

Youko smiled bitterly.

Satou Sei, always so straightforward, always so incorrect with her behaviour. Sei, who could turn everything upside down, who could break through the walls of frost Youko had built around herself. And Youko loved it. With Sei's sexy smile and vivaciously expressive face, how could it be otherwise?

"It depends on how you define 'rich', but I can make ends meet, yes", Youko responded.

"Are you close to taking over the company?"

Sei winked.

"In the name of Maria-sama, no I am not! You know I am too young for it, and I if I seriously attempted to do that I would have to work myself to death."

"As if I am not already suffering enough", Youko added as an afterthought.

"Oh dear", Sei sighed.

She was wearing her hair like she had in their final year of high school, in the way Youko liked it most. Youko tried to imagine the Lillian uniform on Sei, but she was unable to do that.

"Look at you, if I had known back then that you would get so messed up I would have never let my eyes off you", Sei reprimanded in a pretentiously grave voice.

Youko looked at Sei with an almost hurt expression on her face.

"What? Are you angry at me?" Sei teased. "Should I have called you and invited you for a cup of tea?"

Youko turned her head towards the window, and she felt how Sei snuggled closer to her. The distance between them had never been far to start, and now they were so near to each other that Youko could feel the heat emanating from the blonde woman.

Yes, Sei could sometimes be coarse, a bit rough from the edges, a bit too frank. Yet there was so much warmth inside her that every freezing person in the world could have gathered around her and still there would be a whole lot to spare. She was a pocket-sized sun, a universe of her own, an eternal flame that burned a trace in the hearts of everyone who had ever seen her and heard her laugh.

"Come on, don't be so unfair", Sei giggled. "How was I supposed to take the initiative? If a natural meddler like you suddenly went quiet, it must have meant that you had lost all interest in me."

Youko shuddered.

She did not want Sei to know how true the latter's words had been. And it had not been a silent goodbye, more like a world-shattering earthquake. She was unable to meet Sei's gaze and continued instead to look outside at the approaching eventide. The city was being covered by a dark veil, and soon even the reddish colours of dusk would disappear from the horizon. Youko wondered whether the heavenly clockworks would also appear here in Tokyo.

Youko tried several times to brace herself and explain, but she could not say a word. It was as if her mouth had been glued shut, and whenever she tried to speak only a pathetic whimper would come out.

As she expected, Sei did not push her to reply.

"Well, what else has been up with you?" Sei asked.

Youko could almost sense Sei's symphathtic smile.

"You were wrong, Sei", she said, her voice barely audible.

"What are you babbling about?"

This time, Youko turned her head and looked straight into Sei's magnificent eyes. She stretched out her both hands and pressed them against Sei's cheeks, drawing the blonde woman's head closer to her own.

"Shiori was not an angel", she exhaled, leaning her forehead against Sei's. "Because you are."

"Dummy", Sei whispered in Youko's ear. "I hope you didn't sincerely believe I didn't want to spend the night here, because I would be _very _angry if you did."

Youko shook her head slightly. Everything else aside, she was happier than she had been in ages just because she could once again nuzzle herself in Sei's soft, welcoming embrace. It was almost as it had been before, the two pseudo-adult girls cramped inside an one-room apartment, sleeping in a single bed, their hands never separated even in their deepest dreams.

"In all these years... have you ever thought about the past?" Youko asked, her voice clogged with emotion.

"Do you mean about us? Or the others?"

"Well, now that you say it, I'd like to hear about both."

For some time, Sei fell silent. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Youko slipped her hands under the pajamas she had lent Sei. She stroked Sei's skin slowly, careful to cover every patch of Sei's body with her touch, as if she was getting to know Sei once again. When she moved her hands tentatively to cup Sei's breasts, the latter one uttered a muffled moan.

"I used to think about it a lot, and I still do", Sei eventually replied, clutching Youko's hand in her own. "How about you?"

Youko sighed deeply.

"To tell the truth, there are so many things I can't even remember anymore", she said.

Once again, she was afraid to look at Sei. As the silence grew longer, she almost hoped that Sei would be angry, she wanted to be shouted at, she wanted to be called a disloyal bitch and else, but her fear that she would only see Sei's disappointed face was more incapacitating than anything. Almost imperceptibly her grip on Sei's hand got tighter.

"You really are a dummy."

Youko nodded.

"An adorable dummy", Sei said decisively.

Suddenly, in one swift and irresistible motion, Sei grabbed Youko's wrists and vaulted the dark-haired woman under her. With Sei firmly mounted on top of her, Youko felt very vulnerable.

"I think you owe me an explanation, but I'm ready to postpone it for now", Sei purred.

Amidst their kisses, Youko could taste her own, salty tears.

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><p>PS. I actually used the term "Maria-sama", although it is very un-english and it is not something I generally prefer, but somehow I felt that translating the term correctly would have sounded very odd in the context of Marimite. So, Maria-sama it is, then.<p>

PPS. To clarify the timeline, the bar scene in Hokkaido happened before Youko arrived to the airport in Tokyo where she met Sei. Then the story jumps to Youko's house, where Youko and Sei went after they had visited Lillian. I tried to give the impression as if Youko had been telling Sei about her life.


	3. The Meddler

A/N: With the publication of the third chapter, I have tidied the first two chapters a bit, corrected some typos and changed some scenes in some minor ways to make them more consistent with the rest of the story. As I am mostly writing without structured planning, the content in the earlier chapters might not be 100% consistent with the content in the later chapters, but as the story goes on I will be editing the earlier chapters and make them more in tune with the later chapters. It will not be an issue everyone notices, but if you do, please show understanding to the circumstances under which this was written.

Thanks everyone for your reviews, keep them coming :)

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><p><strong>3. The Meddler<strong>

These days, Youko did not even need an alarm to wake up half past six. When rising up, Youko was careful not to disturb Sei's sleep. When she got silently dressed, she let her eyes rest on Sei's peaceful face. Judging from Sei's deep slumber, Youko could tell that she would continue sleeping for a long while.

Leaning over, Youko gave Sei a small kiss on the lips. The latter mumbled something and rolled away from Youko, who could not help smiling. It took her ultimate willpower to leave the bedroom.

An hour later, when Youko was driving her Honda to her office, Tokyo once again showed one of its less attractive faces. The traffic jam never came as a surprise to anyone, yet people always seemed annoyed to no end whenever the endless line of cars came to a halt. Youko could see angry faces inside the cars that overtook her and she heard angry shouting and the screeching sound of car horns. The skyscrapers drew jagged lines on the still dimly lit sky, and once again Youko had the irresistible urge to flee, to turn back and never stop until she could not see a single human dwelling.

Surely this could not be the world where the innocent and pure maidens of Lillian were supposed to live their lives in.

There certainly wasn't a drop of innocence to be found here.

But at least today, Youko could face the hostile world with a formidable weapon, a fresh memory of Satou Sei. For the hundreth time in the past hour, Youko imagined Sei beside her, airing witty remarks and just looking so irresistibly charming. She did not entirely believe that she actually had slept beside Sei, that the woman she had dreamt about so many times was probably still snoring in her very own bed.

It sure was an amazing coincidence, if not destiny.

What had Sei in fact been doing in the airport? Youko wondered abruptly.

She did not know.

When she started to think about it, she had no idea what Sei was doing for work either, nor did she know why Sei could so carelessly sleep in on Friday.

Cursing her own self-centered mind, Youko made a mental note to question Sei when she got back from work.

If Sei would still be there.

Maria-sama, please let Sei still be in my home when I go back, Youko prayed in her mind.

_Me, self-centered?_

She, who had looked out for others even in her last day in Lillian by delivering the rose to the missing student.

_"If a natural meddler like you suddenly went quiet, it must have meant that you had lost all interest in me."_

Her thoughts were racing chaotically. The thought of Sei not being there when she got home made her suffocate. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to be young, she wanted to be her former self again.

"Get a grip on yourself", she said aloud.

Even after her feverishly beating heart had calmed down, she could not avoid wondering where Youko the Meddler had disappeared. Had she really changed so much over the years?

The screeching sound from the horn of the car behind her forced Youko to return to the present. The traffic lights had changed to green without her noticing, and she had to accelerate hurriedly.

Yes, it is no use to think about anything right now, she assured herself.

She would talk with Sei once the weekend came. She told herself Sei would not leave without seeing her or at least leaving a message.

Yes, they would have a proper discussion during the weekend.

It was with the thought of seeing Sei inside her heart that Youko was able to make it through another grueling day at work. There had been too many papers to read, too many reports to be filed, too many phone-calls to be made. A few years ago she might have enjoyed the challenge, nowadays she just felt like a blindfolded horse chasing a carrot. There simply was no goal line to be crossed, nothing to be achieved. Stepping inside her car, she felt that once again some of her life force had been drained away.

Driving back home, neon lights flashed and greeted her from both sides of the streets and almost manic advertisements tried to capture her attention. Even with her mind tightly fixed on a certain person, she was distracted on a few occasions. Once, when she stopped in front of a junction, some deviously engineered mouthpiece of capitalism caught her eye.

A travel agency had a special offer to Hawaii.

For some time Youko entertained herself with the thought of her and Sei lying in the golden sand, once in a while lunging into the warm ocean when the sun was starting to feel too hot on their skin. They would just lie there and relax for the whole day, Youko would read a book and Sei would do whatever she wanted, and Youko would never let Sei out of her sight. During the evenings they would hang out at the beach bar, drinking pina coladas and reminiscing. Youko could almost hear the screaming seagulls, she could almost see the setting sun reflected on the sea and she could almost imagine how it would feel to wake up well-rested beside Sei every day.

The daydream was so vivid Youko could hardly let it go even when she had finally driven her car in her own parking slot.

Finally, she forced her body to function as she dragged herself out of the car and towards the block of flats. Up the stairwell she went, step by step, her heart almost choking in anticipation.

When she inserted the key to the keyhole with shaking hands, she prayed once more that Sei would be waiting inside.

"I am home!"

Her voice was cheerful, too cheerful to cover her nervousness.

Sei's impish face appeared from the bedroom.

"Oh, I already thought about leaving, because I was starting to believe that you would not come home at all", she said.

Youko smiled so broadly that she wondered whether her face would break apart.

"How could I not come home if you were waiting for me?"

"That was my reasoning, too, when I decided to stay", Sei replied.

Youko nodded and lunged to hug Sei.

"That's more like it, my little meddler."

* * *

><p>Having eaten with Sei, Youko felt as if she had enjoyed her meal for the first time in ages. She had cooked the salmon fillet had been to perfection and the cucumber salad had been like a jewel on the top of the crown.<p>

The very reason her life was blossoming again was sitting in front of her, sipping coffee. Sei was wearing Youko's bathrobes, her hair still moist from the shower. Youko felt odd to smell her own shampoo on Sei. The blonde woman did not seem to be bothered by it, however. On the contrary, Sei was repeatedly snatching strands of her own hair between her fingers and smelling them with a curious expression on her face.

"A nice shampoo you have", she remarked.

Youko smiled.

She could have been there forever, just feasting on Sei with her eyes, watching as Sei played carelessly with her hair. She could only guess what Sei was thinking about it all, them being together once again, and Youko was just too curious and too restless to let the time pass without questions being posed and answers given.

"So, what are you up to?" Youko asked.

Sei seemed positively surprised.

"Me? I wonder about it myself, really."

Sei shrugged and took that easy-going impression on her face Youko had seen so many times.

"I can't say I understand why you can just be here and do nothing for the whole day", Youko continued. "Are you working somewhere?"

"Well, I'm certainly not employed the way you are."

"So how do you manage then?"

Sei gave a dry laughter.

"I get some odd jobs here and there, so I am not starving and I can get my rents paid, if that is what you are getting at", she said.

"So you are not married?"

Youko's hearbeat quickened just a little.

This time, Sei laughed loudly and sincerely.

"Do I seem like the typical housewife material to you?"

Youko let out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief and shook her head.

"I don't mean to be intrusive, but I would still like to know what you were doing at the airport. You did not have any luggage with you, so you probably wasn't coming back from anywhere."

"I was there seeing off Shizuka."

Shizuka... It took Youko a while to remember the girl with amazingly black hair. Kanina Shizuka, who had been more or less enamoured with Sei, and Youko could not blame her. Very few back then in Lillian could ignore the White Rose, and Youko herself was certainly not among those few.

"So you two are still in touch with each other?"

Sei nodded.

"She came to visit her parents and I was happy to see her", Sei explained. "She has worked hard in Italy, but she has yet to hit it big."

"Does she still love you?"

Youko bit her lip as soon as the words had escaped her mouth.

Sei raised her eyebrows ever so slightly and her grin looked very natural, but Youko could see she had not been anticipating the question. Youko could sense herself blushing.

"If I may ask, how does it concern you?"

"Forgive me, I should have considered my words more carefully", Youko said apologetically and lowered her head, embarrassment taking over her.

"Jealous?"

Even as Youko was so deeply ashamed, Sei's playful voice made shrills go through her spine.

"You wish."

Her voice was so unconvincing that it would not have deceived even a child, let alone Sei.

"You have changed, Youko", Sei said, her voice suddenly serious. "I can't believe how much."

Youko had been anticipating Sei to continue teasing her, and the direction their conversation had suddenly taken dazed her and she was at a complete loss of words. She stared at her fingernails, trying very hard to figure out something intelligent to say, but failing miserably. She was quite taken aback by her wordlessness, especially because she had been thinking exactly about the thing Sei had just brought up.

Yes, she had changed, yes, she was not the same person as she had been ten years ago. In normal circumstances, she would have explained it to herself as only natural, but at that very moment when she was facing Sei, she was not so certain.

Suddenly, Youko was very afraid.


	4. Regret

Once again, thank you all so much for your reviews! Always nice to know that someone has read what I have been writing and actually liked it.

Without further ado, let the chapter speak for itself.

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><p><strong>4. Regret <strong>

"I still think you owe me and explanation."

So, it had all come to this.

This was a discussion Youko had never wanted to think about, the one she had feared the most for the past decade. Sei's face drenched in the pouring rain, her wet hair glued to her cheeks and her shoulders trembling… Youko could not stop the image drifting in front of her eyes, and she had to disbelievingly acknowledge that she still remembered everything in that scene as if it had been a picture eternally imprinted inside her head.

The raindrops had been falling almost horizontally, and Sei had been forced to slant her eyes to shield them. The light had illuminated Sei's face from an obscure angle, giving the usually so beautiful features a strangely ominous tinge. Youko could still vividly see how Sei had violently brushed her hair away from her face and the motion had been so full of frustration that only thinking about it constricted Youko's heart.

Yes, Youko definitely owed Sei some answers. But, how could one even begin to say such things aloud?

When Youko reminisced about the year following her graduation from Lillian, it was as if she had been watching an old movie through a foggy window panel. During those dreamy days when they had been living together in a cramped apartment filled with pictures of the Yamayurikai, everything had had a very surreal feel to it. And for the whole time, Youko had just somehow _known _that it all would be more or less temporary. However, Youko remembered well, and how painstakingly so.

She could remember that during those numerous evenings, when it had seemed that the whole universe had stopped revolving, they would simply sit at the opposite sides of their dining table and stare into each other's eyes and space out from the world. She remembered how every small detail in their lives had felt so special and sometimes even too magical to be true. They had been young, they had heard the promise of the world in their hearts and they had been ready and willing to chase whatever had been in their reach, even if their pursuit had taken them to the edge of the world.

"I'm sorry."

It was all Youko could manage, even though she knew those words could not convey even a fraction of all the feelings she had for Sei. Putting it so bluntly just made it sound abnormally banal and meaningless. When she began to think about it, she had no idea how was one supposed to make amends at all for deeds that had caused so much pain. Certainly no amount of words could have ever been enough. But, she had to say something, however futile it would be.

"I think in the deepest layers of my mind, I never stopped thinking about you", Youko continued, slowly at first, but her voice was becoming more steady with every word she spoke. "In the past, I had these fits when I would push myself to the brink of sanity by working like crazy, and when I was about to break apart, I would bury myself in coverlets and leaf through old photographs."

"And what would you see?"

Youko shook her head softly.

"Innocence, and I don't mean it in the narrow sense. To think that such a place once existed and still exists and we were actually a part of it... It is just so hard to believe, seeing where we are now."

"Well, you were the one who was obsessed with leaving Lillian, transferring so far away just because you didn't want anyone to rely on you", Sei snorted.

Youko flinched at Sei's words, and she saw a fleeting expression of pleasure on Sei's face.

Back then, she had been able to rationalize her choice not to continue in Lillian by the fact that other universities offered better employment prospects. Indeed, who would have opted for Lillian if the alternative was The University of Tokyo?

There was no sense in clinging on to something that would be lost one way or the other anyway, she had told herself, although her heart had protested fiercely. But as years passed, the justification lost more and more of its credibility.

"Do you have any regrets?" Sei asked.

Her voice was calm. To Youko, it sounded too calm, like the silence before a storm.

"If you had asked five years ago, my answer would have been a definite 'no', but to tell the truth, nowadays I am not so sure", Youko replied.

"So you are not completely heartless after all."

Despite Sei's modest words, her voice was trembling.

Youko sighed.

"I am glad if you think that way."

She did not anticipate Sei's palm that was flung towards her face, and this time, the blow reached its target.

Youko felt stinging pain in her cheek, but Sei's saddened, yet empty expression hurt Youko far more than the half-hearted slap.

"Sometimes I just wonder, what was it all for" Sei said sullenly.

Her whole cheerful posture was unravelling so rapidly that Youko was not sure if it ever had even been there. Yet Youko had witnessed Sei's consoling arms and caring eyes just yesterday, and the contrast made it all the more unsettling.

"It's just that it is so incomprehensible, all that meaningless jargon about moving on and stuff", Sei continued. "What was the meaning of us being together if we had to be separated so soon?"

"Was it not you who always answered that question with your usual uncanny insight?" Youko replied.

Sei's eyes flashed threateningly.

"Maybe so, but perhaps I was young and naïve back then", she spat, her voice rising. "Lillian was not supposed to determine our lives, I know, but if by some occasion it did, what was the point in struggling against it?"

Youko shook her head. She did not have the answers, since she had been asking herself the same questions. The way the former Rosa Gigantea was speaking, her demeanour, her desperate expressions, Youko had seen them all before. But in the present, as opposed to the night in that subway tunnel, Youko was not an outsider in the unfolding drama, but a part of it.

_How am I supposed to be that comforting presence to you once again, if I am the reason to your distress?_

"People move on, sure, but what if I did not want to do so?" Sei demanded. "Who has the authority to tell me to let go of the time and space I belong in? Who has the authority to tell me to accept the doomed world created by foolish people and their actions? A whole lot of good it did to me, forcing myself to forget and carry on as if nothing had happened, picking up what pieces first Shiori and then you had left me. Not that I had any choice, though. Perhaps... "

She paused to catch her breath, and when she started speaking again, there was a rough edge in her voice. Her words were no longer wrapped in satin, and it pained Youko's ears to listen.

"Perhaps after Shiori I came to believe that there would always be someone behind be who would lift me up and teach me to walk again regardless how many times I fell and broke my legs. But who there could have been to support me after you left?"

"Shimako... Yumi... Sachiko or even Eriko... You could have told them..." Youko stammered.

Sei replied with a dry, bitter laughter.

"For heaven's sake, Youko, you can't possibly believe what you are saying! We were former Roses, almost omnipotent beings! Our role was to console them, not the other way around! And how was I supposed to open my mouth, anyway? Should I have called them and said '_Oh no, that __bitch Rosa Chinensis just dumped me, please offer me a shoulder I can cry against_' ? A great plan, except for the fact that they would have asked you right away about it and you would have told them a different version of the story. Who do you think they would have believed, me or you? Yes, they might have liked me, but they downright revered you as if you were a queen. And there was no way I would have told Eriko anything, or have you forgotten even that?"

Youko was so shocked by Sei's outburst that she could hardly form a clear and consistent sentence. The pain radiating from Sei was just too much, it made Youko want to curl up in a corner and cry, but she could not just shut her mouth. She wanted to know, even if her questions would only lead to more enraged words being thrown at her.

"What about your Onee-sama?"

"I could not bring myself to call her."

Sei had calmed down somewhat, but it did not make it any easier to listen to her broken voice.

"I wanted her to think that I was doing all right", she continued, staring into her palms. "Or perhaps I just didn't want her to know that we had got separated."

"But isn't it what Onee-sama's are for? To nurture you when you are hurt?"

Sei smiled, looking almost amused, but not quite.

"It seems you still have an uncanny affinity to lecture me", she said. "You actually make it sound as if it was my fault."

Youko shook her head.

"You know as well as I do that I never intended to lay any blame on you", she said. "Because I am the culprit, not anybody else."

"The way you say it makes it sound more like an order than an apology", Sei commented sourly. "I hate your strong will."

Youko nodded.

"At least we still agree on that."

A brief spell of silence ensued, and it gave Youko some respite to see that Sei's face was no longer twisted in agony as it had been just moments ago. The blonde woman was far from her usual self, to be sure, but at least it did not hurt Youko any longer to look at her.

"While you were away, I contemplated whether to bring this up", Sei said. "I was not particularly eager to summon the demons of the past, but I felt that I simply could not go on pretending like nothing ever happened."

"I understand."

"You know, there is a limit to everything. Especially to the amount of pain one is ready to suffer. I don't hold any grudge against you, and neither am I bitter. I might sound cynical, but after everything that has happened I am just neither idealistic nor innocent enough to risk a third end of the world."

"In your place I would not think otherwise."

Although Youko was quick to agree, she was terrified to hear what conclusions Sei would draw. She wanted to cling on to the White Rose with all her might now that she had found her, yet a small voice inside her head kept telling her it was already too late.

"I don't want to be harsh, but to tell the truth, I'm not sure we should be seeing each other."

Youko's heart missed a beat.

She opened her mouth, but there were no words.

After all, she did not know what could she have said.

Because there was nothing else that she could have done, she ended up apologizing once again.

"I don't hold any grudge against you, really. Maybe I never can forgive you, but when enough time passes it becomes irrelevant", Sei sighed. "I just don't want to go through it all over again."

Youko drew a deep breath.

"Will you at least stay for a moment longer to look at the old photos with me?"

Sei smiled, and even if it was hardly a happy one, it was definitely sincere.

"I am glad you are not trying to change my mind."

This time, Youko could smile too.

"Fortunately, I have not yet sunk so low, my dear friend."

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><p>More melodrama! I hope you are not getting enough of it already. There will be quite a lot of studying for me to do in the following month(s), so I warn you all that updating might become less frequent. In any case, I will try hard to find time for writing this little fic. I have actually grown quite fond of this :) Somehow I just ended up writing the girls (or women, actually) in a more grittier setting, while trying to maintain as much of the spirit of the original series as possible. It's funny, when I started writing this fic I wanted just to continue my Marimite experience, but somehow I have improvised quite much. The stories live their own lives, once again. Seriously, I really miss Sei... Why did she have to leave so soon? Why could not Marimite have started when Eriko, Youko and Sei entered Lillian? :D<p>

PS. Yamayurikai is a staple like, Maria-sama, so I have not translated it at all.


	5. Time

Once again, many thanks for your reviews. Thanks for staying with me and encouraging me to write more. Keep the reviews coming, but most importantly, _enjoy!_

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><p><strong>5. Time<strong>

Saturday dawned bright and frisky. However, the sunshine of autumn was this time, too, fraught with melancholy and anticipation of the coming winter. It was already October, the temperate days were poised to end soon also in Tokyo. Youko hoped the winter would be a lenient one.

Rising up from her bed, she pulled an oversized shirt over her head and crept to the kitchen to make some coffee.

The kitchen was, along with the rest of her apartment, in a sorry state. Besides from sleeping, she had spent probably only two hours each day in her home, so there had been very little time for cleaning. There were dirty dishes scattered all over her dining table, empty grocery packages decorated her floor and the bin, which was stacked full to the brink, gave off a suspicious smell.

At times like these, Youko thought she needed a housewife.

"How am I supposed to manage both work and home?" she muttered aloud.

With some effort she succeeded in clearing some space from the table for her to have coffee, but whatever optimism the sunny weather might have given her was quickly slipping away as she realized that her weekend would be consumed by "pleasant" cleaning.

There was no point in putting off the chores, so right after having her breakfast, Youko put on some worn-out clothes and grabbed the bull on the horns. With vigour that surprised even herself, she filled the dishwashing machine, washed the bigger pans and kettles manually, disposed the reeking garbage, picked all the waste from her floor, vacuumed and scrubbed every layer she could lay her hands on until they were shining as if they had been brand new. Then she proceeded to organize all the work-related documents and files she had randomly left all over her apartment, and the process in its grittiness made everything else pale in comparison.

After she had finished, it was already late in the afternoon, and she was getting hungry. With nothing but some deep-frozen, ready-to-eat meals in her fridge that she had no intentions of ever consuming, she had no alternatives but to go shopping.

Exhausted to the core, Youko somehow compelled her feet to obey and carry her downstairs to her car. Her Honda was looking even more inhospitable as usual, and she wondered why she had chosen such a vehicle. The shapes were too unrefined and the iron-grey colour was devoid of any warmth.

At least the car ran smoothly. Whatever ruptures there might have been on the roads Youko drove on, she could not feel them.

Midway to the nearest supermarket, she suddenly decided to turn around. If she proceeded to the store and cooked afterwards, it would be something like six in the evening when she would finally have time for herself. And for once she wanted to relax for a whole evening, without thinking about the dishes that would be waiting for her.

There was a small Italian restaurant nearby she had always wanted to visit, and some minutes later she was sitting at one of the mahogany tables, studying the beautifully designed menu the waiter had brought her upon her entry.

It was not yet suppertime for most people, so Youko had the privilege to be almost alone in the restaurant, only other customer being an old man hunched in one of the corner tables. The interior decorations were very tastefully administered, and the place had a pleasant, if not particularly Italian, air to it.

After some pondering, Youko ordered mushroom pasta, and the female waiter smiled at her prettily.

Seeing the girl's sweet expression actually made Youko quite sad.

If only I had someone smiling at me like that every day, I probably would not feel so damn depressed, Youko thought.

Depression probably was not the correct word for the condition she was in, but nevertheless she had not been feeling very well, especially in the last few weeks. And it did not take a genius to come up with the reason behind her distress.

When she had embraced Sei over two weeks ago at the airport, she had not expected the events to play out as they did. When she had begged Sei to save her, she had meant it from the bottom of her heart, and she had actually believed that Sei would do just that.

Of course, she had uttered those pleading words amidst her bewilderment, in a state of blissful forgetfulness. Because afterwards, when Sei had left without even giving her a final hug, she came to realize how selfish she had been, asking for Sei to save her from the consequences of her own, inconsiderate actions. Her actions, which had once again shattered Sei's world, just when it had begun to seem that the ever-cheerful girl was finally getting over her earlier loss.

So, Youko had not once called Sei, even though she had on many occasions wanted to. She could imagine that it was far more agonizing for Sei to see her than for her not to see Sei.

Youko had to admit that the former Rosa Gigantea had been right. The latter's words had been furious, they had been carelessly spoken, but they had been as powerfully insightful as they always were.

Because there had never been a single, real reason for Youko to leave. She had not wanted for anyone to rely on her after she graduated, but had that wish not been a bit pretentious? With the soeur system and the intensely close Yamayurikai, how was one supposed simply to forget their graduated Onee-sama's and fellow Roses?

Sachiko, Sei, Yumi, all her fans… They had all depended on her in their own way, and perhaps she, too, had been attached to them more than just a bit. In Lillian, her heart had been at peace. And she had been so fortunate, having been able to retain a memento of the times past in the form of a whole human being. With Sei, it never seemed like they had left Lillian behind. Whenever they had time, they would meet up with their former Rose families and laugh together until their bellies hurt. Youko remembered weekend picnics, tea parties and even a Buddha statue sightseeing tour Shimako and Noriko had devised… And it all had happened during that terribly brief year filled with meaningful smiles and Sei's brittle laughter, which would become something very different far too soon.

Just thinking about it made Youko shudder and bury her face in her palms.

People were supposed to move on either naturally or when they had no other choice. And the way Youko had abruptly forsaken everything belonged in neither category. It had been more like an act of masochism and unforgivable violence combined, forcing herself to abandon the wishes of her heart and making Sei do the same thing.

Afterwards, the cheerful gatherings quickly turned into embarrassed phone-calls and soon not even that. Even though she and Sei had explained that they were becoming increasingly busy, Youko suspected that the more sharp ones in the former Yamayurikai, namely Shimako and maybe Yoshino, might have realized there had been something wrong. Although Youko was certain that no-one would have ever mentioned anything even if they had known, let alone blamed her, she never ceased to feel uneasy.

And yet, she had been wanting to see them.

Besides her reawakened concern for Sachiko and her growing longing for the others, during those past weeks she had been missing even Eriko. She wondered had the determined former Yellow Rose finally managed to marry that Yamanobe-guy and whether society was bearing down on Eriko as heavily as it was bearing down on her. The Yellow Rose had never come to their gatherings, and after their graduation they had only exchanged some brief e-mails. As opposed to Youko and Sei, Eriko was the one who had successfully stretched out her wings and flown to the wide world, leaving Lillian behind in its entirety.

Caught in the middle of her musings, Youko could hardly taste what she was eating.

When she left the restaurant, it was already dark. On the highway cars were coming and going relentlessly, their iron frames and cold front lights flashed briefly in front of her eyes before they were replaced by other ones. Toyotas, Volkswagens, BMWs... On the other side of the road, epileptic neon lights promised top-quality cosmetic products at bargain prices, and directly beneath the advertisement a high school girl was kissing a suit-wearing man in his fourties.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of the scene, the fact that the two cuddlers made no effort to hide what they were doing in any way stirred some amusement in Youko. They could actually be sincerely in love.

Or they were just exceptionally indecent.

But it was none of Youko's business. Turning her back, she walked to her Honda. The steel construct serving the purpose of a vehicle was as repulsive as ever. Under the street lamps of the parking place the metallic surface of the car gleamed coldly.

Sighing, she unlocked the doors with her remote controller and stepped in.

Even as she swallowed her pride and started the engine, inside her head she had already decided that she would sell her Honda as soon as possible. She wanted something more beautiful, more graceful. Perhaps a small sports car with only two seats.

After all, she did have quite a sum of money in her bank account, and it was time she started using it. A car was not much of an investment, but it was anyhow better to buy herself a more attractive companion than to let all her money rot away in the virtual universe. With banks going bankrupt every now and then, it was as if even the financial realm was going through the same painful phase in its life as Youko was experiencing in her own.

Nowadays, she did not hear the promise of the world every day she woke up. She had to hunt for it, search for it in the remotest corners of the reality, and more often than not her efforts were in vain.

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><p>Later, when it was already past midnight, Youko lay on her bed, once again flipping through the pages of the photo album containing the snapshots from her high school times. She had opened a bottle of red wine she had found in one of her kitchen closets, and she had already drunk half of its contents, so her head was feeling a bit dizzy. When she looked at a single picture long enough, she could almost see the people in them starting to move and form silent words with their lips. She and Sei were winking at each other in one photo, Sachiko was gently stroking Yumi's hair in another, Yoshino was screaming something to Rei in the third one...<p>

She could only imagine what the two cousins were up to nowadays. She had never been very close to them, but at that very moment even the faded memory of the two wilful girls felt more real than anything that was surrounding her.

Not that they were "girls" in the strict sense of the word anymore.

Even the soeurs of their boutons were now twenty-eight.

The notion caused icy shivers travel down Youko's spine.

She herself was only a few years away from becoming officially middle-aged.

She could not help thinking that she had lived thirty years just to achieve a post in some random company, doing random things for random people. And at what price?

She did believe that in life, one always won some and lost some. Yet, what had she gained for the things that she had given? What had she won in exchange for her innocence, her youth and her hopes? What had she achieved by leaving behind the only person she had ever truly loved?

She could hardly convince herself that fate had treated her fairly.

Unless... Unless her sacrifices had been made mistakenly.

When she contemplated about it in greater detail, it seemed only natural. Just as one could not convert one currency to another by throwing cash into a well, one could not hope to gain anything in exchange for one's foolish deeds. Otherwise, everyone in the world would be a renowned genius.

Suddenly, Youko noticed that she was trembling so much that the wine was spilling over the edges of the glass, dying the sheets deep purple. With some effort, she managed to place the glass on the floor.

Despite the storm in Youko's heart, she could not shed a single tear.

Perhaps the sorrow that had been gradually building up inside her was so monolithic and all-encompassing that it had exceeded the point when crying could bring her any comfort. Perhaps after Sei had left, she had simply forgotten how. Or perhaps she was just too old.

Yes, she was not a teenager anymore. She was too old, too hard-boiled to pine tearfully after anyone, even Satou Sei. Once there would have been a festering wound, but now all she could feel was a dull emptiness. What had been lost was irreversibly lost, but life went on and in two day's time she would be once again caught in the middle of the rat race, having probably all but forgotten her brief encounter with Sei.

But meanwhile, she would be turning back the clock.

The freshly graduated Sei smiled at her from the album.

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><p>AN: I really hope that one day I will be able to read the original Marimite novels. In my eyes Sei was always the one who wanted to stay close to everyone, while Youko and Eriko were the more distant ones. So thus I decided that Youko was the one to leave the relationship. Despite her flirtatious nature, I always considered Sei a very loving and faithful person in the end.

PS. Thank you people who have given me links to the translations of the novels. I appreciate very much.


	6. Dead End

Hi everyone, and once again I would like to thank you for your reviews. You really motivate me to continue.

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><p><strong>6. Dead End<strong>

As Youko had expected, in the following weeks she hardly had time even for her own thoughts. The ever-increasing amount of work kept her busy like an otter building a dam, she barely had time to eat lunch during the working days. The merging of the two companies would soon be formally annouced, their office would be fully renovated to celebrate the occasion. For Youko, it meant more paperwork and probably also saying goodbyes to some of her associates. Nowadays every firm was positively hunting for opportunities to fire their inefficient workers, and although Youko knew she herself was not in any kind of serious danger, she nevertheless shared the anxiousness of her fellow employees. There was an air of insecurity hanging above everyone, and Youko wanted it to recede, she wanted things to get back to normal. She did not like the envious remarks her associates were directing at her, nor did she enjoy the scrutinizing eye of her boss.

Consequently, she all but forgot Sei. Occasionally, usually in the middle of the night when she awakened for no apparent reason and was unable to fall to sleep again, the blonde woman would pop up in Youko's mind, but even during those moments she was able to push the White Rose away from her consciousness, so that in the morning all she could feel was a vague uneasiness, as if her thoughts had been a bad dream.

And before she had even time to blink, Christmas was approaching. Colourful, vivacious decorations filled the shopping centres, santa clauses appeared to the display windows and the usual advertisements urging people to purchase the most wondrous gifts followed suit. The hustle and bustle in the hypermarkets Youko visited became noticeably more intense, children demanded new toys, and their parents tried to the best of their ability to comply with the wishes of their sweethearts.

As time went on and the memory of Sei gradually dimmed in her mind, she mostly stopped thinking about her own life. Captured in the middle of the cycle of her daily routines, the notion of whether she was happy or not seemed to lose its meaning. It was as if such matters were no longer relevant. Sometimes Youko felt like she was something of a small robot, an automaton assigned to fulfill some distinct tasks by whoever had made her. As quiet, monotonous days passed, the encounter with Sei felt more and more surreal. When she tried to imagine Sei's arms around her, she could not visualize it, let alone remember the warmth which she nevertheless knew had engulfed her when she had been in Sei's embrace.

Sometimes in the weekends, when she felt exceptionally detached from the world, she would drive with her brand-new Audi to a small buddhist shrine outside the city and just revel in the silence. In the three times she had visited the minuscule temple, there had never been anyone except her. Yet the shrine grounds were always tidy and well-kept. It had an attractive little garden, which to Youko's surprise was still very vibrant at that time of year, and Youko would lay down on one of the wooden benches and close her eyes until she could hear the wind whistling through the thin grass.

Her trips gave her temporary respite from the stifling city. Whenever she returned from the temple, it was as if her senses had been sharpened millionfold. For some days afterwards, she would see, hear and smell everything around her with such a clarity that it felt supernatural. During those days, the world once again appeared as a beautiful place. She would just stare how sunlight fell on her office table through the window, the colour of the sunlit patches would darken from light yellow to deep orange as morning progressed into afternoon.

One day, when she stayed at her office until nine-o'-clock in the evening, she happened to glance at the sky when she was about to leave, and suspended in the sky was the giant, greenish clockwork machine she had seen once before. The scene in which she had been sipping whisky and gazing outside the window of the hotel bar in Sapporo seemed at least a lifetime away from the present, even though it had only been a few months.

The cogwheels of the construct kept rotating, and Youko did not give a damn.

The Emperor's birthday came and went with the Christmas, and on the following Saturday Youko sat in a frech-style cafeteria, trying to relax as much as she could with a cup of cappucino. It was one of those days without any goal to it, just sitting around and killing time until it was late enough for her to go to sleep. People were coming and going around her, but she had lost her conception of time. Whenever the waiter started to look at her suspiciously, she would order something, and then she would just space out again.

Once in a while she awoke and considered leaving and doing some more productive things, but she never had the willpower to make herself rise up. It was as if her bottom had been glued to her seat. So, there she sat until the sun had passed its zenith, and the waiter was starting to look at her ever more disbelievingly.

Youko was amused as she noticed that she was playing with the possibility of dating someone new. She had not done that in ages, and the prospect made her smile, for a moment. Then, as quickly as the amusement had surfaced, it shriveled and wilted away. It might be fun for a short time, but...

She knew that she could not stop thinking about Sei even when she was kissing someone else. Even when a pair of unfamiliar hands were fondling her, even when a stranger was making love to her, her thoughts always turned to Satou Sei.

"... is it really you?"

A soft, velvety voice was breaking into Youko's consciousness slowly, but steadily.

She raised her head curiously.

Leaning towards her was a woman so hauntingly beautiful that it made her gasp.

The woman had chestnut coloured, wavy hair, and her tresses framed a heart-shaped, exquisite face, whose most outstanding feature was a pair of large, mirrorlike eyes. She was wearing a simple blouse and a modest brown skirt, but she would have stood out even if she had a sack pulled over her. Her bright eyes were looking at Youko kindly, and the slightly pursed lips were smiling in an enchanting fashion.

Youko had not remembered that Sei's bouton had been so alluring.

"Shimako..."

The younger woman sat down, and continued to smile.

"Why do you look so baffled? Is there something wrong? Would you prefer to be alone?"

Youko shook her head, and smiled too.

"No, it is a pleasant surprise."

In fact, Youko was a little afraid.

With Sei, she had never had to worry about whether they would get along. There had always been so much between them that they could have met at the end of the world and they would have just jumped into each other's arms and been as if nothing was wrong. But now, even though Youko was sincerely happy to see Shimako, she was scared that there would be too few things to say, that that what had once been a close friendship would turn out to be something entirely different.

Because it was not as if it had been only yesterday when they had met for the last time.

And she did not want to discover her past only to lose it again.

However, as they changed the usual pleasantries, Youko soon noticed that there was not even a slight trace of embarrassment between them. Sometimes they would both fall silent, but even during those moments they would look each other in the eye, and there would be a perfect mutual understanding. Yes, Sei once had said that if Shimako wanted to be somewhere, she would be there regardless of what others told her, and if she did not want to be around, no amount of persuading could make her decide otherwise.

And Youko was glad that Shimako had chosen to be beside her.

"It is so strange, because to tell the truth I have no idea what has become of either you or anyone else. All of you might be living in the same street with me and I would not have an inkling", Youko said.

Shimako nodded.

"I truly came to like all of you", she replied. "And yet time does more damage to our relationships than any quarrels or disagreements."

If it had been one of Youko's greatest pleasures to listen to Sei's voice, listening to Shimako's was not far behind in that department. Youko noticed herself trying to capture and memorize every silky note, every incipient melody in Shimako's voice, but dainty as it was, it proved surprisingly elusive. Every time the brown-haired woman stopped speaking, Youko craved to hear more.

"So, tell me, what are you up to these days?" Youko asked curiously.

Shimako smiled bashfully.

"I am an artist, I think. Kind of", she responded, her surprised expression every bit as heart-warming as Yumi's had been once upon a time.

Youko raised her eyebrows a bit, demanding clarification.

"Mostly I do oil painting. I actually had a small exhibition not a long time ago."

"Oh, I never guessed you were talented in that aspect, too."

Shimako shook her head modestly.

"I am not ground-breakingly great or anything like that", she explained. "I just happened to start doing it after you graduated, and it has turned into a profession without me even properly noticing."

"Well, at least that sounds a thousand times more interesting than how I spend my days", Youko exhaled.

"You have not liked your work?"

Seeing Shimako's astounded face, Youko could not stop a laughter from escaping her lips.

"I'm sorry", she said, quickly regaining her composure. "Yes, is it not ironic? Nothing at all should have been wrong after I entered the University of Tokyo, but it seems destiny had other ideas."

"I see."

Youko knew she did not have to say anything more. Because Shimako, if anyone, would understand only by looking at her.

"But enough about me, how are you doing apart from your work? Are you still in touch with Noriko?"

Shimako said she still saw Noriko sometimes, and Youko could only imagine how happy the meetings between the former White Roses would be. In her mind, Youko always pictured them in the middle of sakura flowers, in the background there would be a golden field or an old, ornate temple. They would walk side by side, perhaps holding hands, and there would not be a single worry in the world, just as it had been when they had still been wearing the uniforms of Lillian.

"I am very fortunate to be able to support myself by painting", Shimako said. "I still don't feel very comfortable around people, and I like it when I can work alone for most of the time."

"To tell the truth, I can relate to that very well", Youko said. "Sometimes I get these uncontrollable urges to run somewhere far away and just seal myself off from the world."

Now it was Shimako's turn to raise her eyebrows, compelling Youko to continue.

"Everything is so different than how I imagined it would be. I truly thought my life was going into the right direction when I started university", Youko said quietly. "But it soon turned out that I was slowly, but steadily heading towards a dead end, and the worst part was that I never realised it until my nose hit the wall."

When one became blind enough, there was no distinction between left and right, between going forward and going backward. It had been as if she had been wandering in a maze with her eyes blindfolded, but nevertheless she had been completely sure that she road she had taken had been the correct one. So instead of advancing carefully and always keeping open the option of backtracking, she had rushed headway into the heart of a deepest mire.

"Forgive me, I did not mean to impose myself on you", Youko continued. "The notion just crossed my mind and I had to say it aloud."

"It's okay", Shimako replied softly. "I am glad to listen to you after all you have done for me."

"I am happy that someone actually thinks that I have been of help. Perhaps even I myself started to believe that I was never anything else than a meddler, as Sei used to call me."

Youko stiffened. She had not intended to bring Sei into the discussion, and a glance at Shimako confirmed that the latter, too, could perceive the ghosts surrounding the name.

"I am certain Onee-sama meant only good in the end", Shimako answered. "Didn't she always?"

"Yes, she did", Youko sighed. "Deep inside, I guess she was the noblest of us."

Shimako stretched out her hand and lay it on Youko arm. It felt good to be touched by someone, and suddenly Youko could breathe a little easier.

Shimako did not continue speaking, and Youko was grateful for her tactfulness. Shimako might have not known all the details, but Youko could tell that the younger woman had figured out enough to be content with silence.


	7. Interlude

**Interlude**

"So I'm quite a recluse nowadays", she said, trying to mask her obvious feelings under a cheerful burst of laughter. "Or perhaps I should say _again_ instead of _nowadays_."

I stretched out my hand and brushed the cheek of the woman lying beside me. Her wheat-blonde hair positively shone even in the dimly lit room.

"Are you sure you are all right?" I asked.

"It depends on how one defines 'to be all right'."

"Just answer me", I demanded and gripped her arm forcefully. She turned her head towards me, and her eyes met mine. There was a playful glint in her eyes, and I did not know how did she manage to always wear that cheerful mask on her face. Even now, when there had to be a raging turmoil inside her head, she was smiling, and how beautifully so.

"Sometimes when I want to smile, my face simply does not obey me. Try as I might, the expression doesn't come, and those are the worst moments, ones during which I truly feel something is wrong", she said, her voice resonating in the silence. "And then there are times when days just come and go, and I never notice anything. From morning to afternoon I am glued to the computer, then I make some food and watch TV or read something until I go to sleep. Occasionally I go out and meet someone, but there are too few people worth seeing these days. I could be worse off, though. So I am not complaining."

I sighed. Ten years ago, the forest of thorns surrounding her had receded so much that I almost came to believe that it would never again confine her. Now ten years later, the cage she was trapped in was so dense that I could barely even see her, let alone reach my hands to touch the innermost sanctums of her heart.

"I am worried about you", I said. "I will be going back to Italy in a few days, and already now the thought is hurting me."

She laughed.

"I will be all right", she told me, wrapping her arms around me protectively, even though I should have been the one to do that for her. "You just focus on getting your voice heard."

"I can't bring myself to leave you here all alone...", I started, but she silenced me with a kiss, and I forgot everything I was about to say. Her hands were suddenly stroking my skin wildly, she was so close that I could smell the scent of her body, she was nibbling my lips and all I could do was to respond to her kisses with my own, more tentative ones.

"I want you, Shizuka."

She heaved herself on top of me, our lips never parting, and then her hands were holding my shoulder blades almost painfully, and I pressed my fingers into her back, and she moaned softly as my nails dug into her skin. Her hair covered our faces like an angelic aura, and our kisses were becoming more and fiery she violently removed whatever clothes I still had on me.

"I want you too, Sei."

* * *

><p>Hours later, when Sei had fallen asleep, I lay beside her and stared at the ceiling, my thoughts too tumultous for me to relax. It was warm to be under the same coverlet, once in a while I would touch her to make sure she was still there.<p>

She was not of this world.

And yet I was sleeping in the same bed as her, I had been making love to her and would continue to do so until I would leave Japan. And then there would be months, perhaps even a year without her, and I would just have to try to forget her and get on with my regular life, but how was I supposed to put someone like her out of my mind?

No wonder I had been childishly infatuated with her already back in Lillian. When we first parted, I never believed I would one day have the privilege to caress her, to pet her and to sleep in her arms. In the past years, the weeks of blissful oblivion I had spent in her small apartment thousands of kilometers away from my home in Italy were all I thought about at night.

Yes, meeting for a blink of an eye and then parting for an eternity... It was painful. But I was an adult, and adults were hardened to endure such things, because nothing came easy, because merely the thought of seeing her, be it in the distant future or not, could sustain me for ages. So, I would revel in the fact that I had once again experienced days of almost agonizing happiness.

But this time I knew it would be different.

"You are such a fool, my love", I whispered.

To my surprise, Sei stirred at my words.

"I guess I am", she replied dreamily.

"I love you, you know that, don't you?"

She nodded.

"Promise me you will be all right."

"Why?"

"Just promise. Or I won't leave."

She did not say a word. It was as if she had been frozen solid, her eyes were emptily staring to nothingness, her usually so vivacious face was completely expressionless, and for a moment I was actually afraid that she had stopped breathing.

"Do you hate me, Shizuka?"

She could have hit me, beaten me, insulted me and decided to never see me again, but I could have never felt anything but the deepest affection for her. Because after all, she was Satou Sei.

"I know I am selfish and cruel, but in times like these I really need you", she exhaled.

I embraced her and covered her head with kisses.

"That is why I am here, my love."

"Thank you."

* * *

><p>That night, there were stars on the sky. Small and dim as they were, I had to slant my eyes to see them properly. Sei had better vision than me, so she would point at all the stars she noticed. Standing on the balcony with nothing but a nightgown on me, I could feel the chill of the winter deep inside my bones, but such matters seemed to lose their meaning as I was with Sei. Her presence made me warmer than any fire.<p>

"Come to Italy with me."

The thought had been swirling inside my head for so long that saying it aloud felt quite unreal. My heart was beating so hard that I might have fainted if I had looked at Sei. I could not even breathe. Sounds of merrymaking echoed from somewhere below us, and suddenly I wanted to be somewhere far away.

"Do you really want me to?"

Of course I wanted. I wanted it more than anything else. I wanted to be with her every day instead of a few days in a year, I wanted to bathe in her light and nurture her and give her so much love that even the cage of thorns around her would melt away.

"Please, Sei. I ask this for both of us."

She moved in front of me, and lifted my face up towards her, and this time I had no choice than to look straight into her brilliant eyes.

"What I want to say is that I don't deserve you, but then again, who ever deserves anything? How did I deserve to end up like this?" she said quietly. "But I love you, I really do. Perhaps more than anyone else."

"I was afraid you might say that."

Sei shook her head.

"I can't, not yet. Perhaps one day."

I sincerely hoped that day would never come. Because that would have meant that even the last patch of light inside her prison would have been forever extinguished.

* * *

><p>"I still think you should call her."<p>

"Even if that meant the end of our meetings?"

"Yes, even if it would."

"Why?"

"Because you love her, you crave her, you need her, and you imagine being with her even when you are screaming my name at the height of your pleasure. And she needs you."

"I am sorry."

"You don't have to apologize for your feelings."

"You know I am not apologizing for that."

"I am fortunate to have been with you as much as I have."

"But that does not make me any less cruel or selfish."

"Perhaps, but I can't be bitter for that. We were never supposed to be together, that much was clear right from the beginning. Moments like these I have stolen _from her_. For you, she is more than what I could ever be."

"Fool."


	8. Twice Found, Twice Lost

So... Here we go again, the longest chapter yet. Thanks everyone for your reviews, I thought writing a small piece from another perspective would be interesting.

Thanks for all of you who have been encouraging me with this fic. I love you all.

* * *

><p><strong>7. Twice Found, Twice Lost<strong>

Youko had been dreaming. And as it so often happened, she had been able to recall the dream exactly after she had woken up, but now, a couple of minutes later, there was only a blank space in that part of her memory the dream had occupied just moments ago.

In the winter, she had gotten used to awakening in the middle of the night and being too afraid of the disturbing visions to sleep again. When that had happened, she had just turned on the TV and stared emptily at the screen until it was late enough for her to start her daily routines.

In one of those recurring nightmares, she was running in a corridor with intricate decorations on the walls, but it never seemed to lead anywhere as the wall patterns kept changing according to a strict cycle which always started from the beginning when Youko ran for long enough. In the dream, she knew there was something waiting for her at the end of the road, and it was exactly her inability to reach her goal which upset her the most.

But now, sunlight was filtering through the thin curtains. When Youko rose up to look outside, she was greeted by the dawn. Unlike in autumn, the rising sun was full of promise.

Spring. Another generation of Roses would blossom and wilt, and the mantle would be passed to another generation of boutons. So the Yamayurikai would continue to bloom, gently watching over the maidens of Lillian like Maria-sama herself.

For Youko, spring stood for bittersweet goodbyes. Once, she had been strong enough to turn a blind eye to the past and face the future with open arms. Now, she wanted to turn back. In front of her was a desert, behind her a gushing river with its only bridge burned into ashes. Yet, if she kept shouting, perhaps someone would hear her and take her back to the opposite shore with a makeshift boat.

Yes, in spring it was impossible not to reminisce. It was as if her head had been suddenly invaded by memories that had not been there just days before. She saw in her mind the Lily Mansion filled with students, she heard their laughter, and she even smelled the slight scent of grass and mud which had been carried by the wind through the open windows.

Perhaps even now, there was some drama unfolding in the Mansion. There may have been discord between soeurs, maybe some banal misunderstanding was weighing down on the current Yamayurikai too, just like in the old days when Youko had still been Rosa Chinensis. When put into perspective, Youko fully realized that what she had been and still was going through was nothing exceptional, but it was exactly those mundane misfortunes combined which sometimes made the world seem like such a dark place.

She also thought about Sei, but no longer did it cause her pain. Instead, her heart was filled with concern for the woman she after all, loved. In Youko's imagination, the blonde woman was always crouching alone over a worn-out desk, clad in ragged clothes and her hair undone. The image had never been rooted in reality, but in Youko's mind it was a powerful picture, one which made her shift uneasily whenever she thought about it.

It may have been only inside her head, but Youko had always thought of herself as the one standing behind Sei, supporting the latter with her vigilant presence. Still, Youko felt Sei needed her, and she could not be at peace. She wanted to call Sei more and more each day, not because of herself but because of Sei. She wanted to talk to her, if only to hear the latter say she was doing fine. Perhaps then, Youko could have felt calmer.

She did want to see the White Rose for selfish reasons too. Youko was mature enough to admit that. She did entertain thoughts of reconciliation. She wanted to live under the same roof with Sei again. What she could also honestly say, however, was that her selfish desires paled in comparison with her acute need to know that Sei was happy.

Because Youko felt that she was the one to blame, if Sei was not.

And that burden of guilt was too heavy, even for Youko.

Every day, before she went to sleep, she toyed with her phone. She planned everything she would say and how to say it and she imagined all the possible retorts Sei would have and how she would respond, and yet she never could muster enough courage to dial the correct numbers. Once, she had come close, but her hands had been shaking so much that she had called Shimako instead.

All the while Youko knew that she would have to do it sooner or later. For good or worse, she had to meet Sei one final time.

If nothing else, she would bid her a proper farewell.

* * *

><p>"I am worried about her."<p>

Even though Youko had been very anxious when she had first stepped into the small restaurant, she was surprised at how quickly she had calmed down. She did not know why the woman in front of her had such a soothing effect on her.

"About Onee-sama? Why?" Shimako asked. She was as elegantly dressed as ever, and her small, lithe hands were peacefully folded on the table.

Youko had seen Shimako a few times after their meeting in the aftermath of Christmas, and their brief conversations were the best therapy Youko could hope for. Shimako, with her serene posture, could make all Youko's worries recede, even if only temporarily. Sometimes, Youko felt more connected to the distant and detached Shimako than to anyone or anything else.

"I don't know. Perhaps I am afraid that she is unhappy and I can't do anything about it. Perhaps I am just a meddler."

Shimako looked thoughtful. She was frowning slightly, there was a small, almost imperceptible wrinkle on her forehead, her eyes were slanted, but still exceptionally large, and it all suited her lovely face perfectly.

"Do you have any particular reason to be concerned? Did something happen?"

A brief struggle ensued inside Youko, but seeing Shimako's brilliant features and sincere expression, Youko felt safe, and more so than she had felt in ages.

* * *

><p>It was raining. And it was not a gentle drizzle, but more like as if some god was crying, a real, heavy downpour, a retribution for all the sunny and warm days of the past month. The streets were positively flooding, the drainage wells were treated to more water than they could swallow even in their wildest dreams. There were hardly even cars on the road, and those unlucky few who had to walk were hunched against the hostile raindrops.<p>

Inside their apartment, it was warm. No storm was strong enough to pierce the walls surrounding them, walls they had padded with so much love and caring.

No, unless the storm was brewing _inside _their shelter.

"Do you ever think about the future?" the young woman with finely cropped, shoulder-length black hair asked. The feelings of restlessness had been nesting inside her for a long time, and once again she could not restrain herself, even though somewhere in the remote corner of her mind she realized that she should have stayed silent.

"Please, let's not start this conversation again", the other person in the room, a tall, blonde woman replied. She had almost gotten used to the black-haired one's inquiries, but they still made her feel a little uneasy. However, up until now, it had been enough for her to take her brooding companion in her arms to put a stop to the disturbing words, so she had no reason to be too worried about it, at least not yet.

"But I can't stop myself, and I think it would be easier for me if you shared my concerns."

The black-haired woman was trying to keep her mouth shut, but the words were surfacing uncontrollably. She could not gaze into the blonde's eyes, so instead she studied the various small paintings hanging on the wall. One of them stood for a small cottage in the middle of grassland, the cute dwelling had walls of red tile, but the cracks between the tiles were like black snakes, hissing and squirming until it dazzled Youko's eyes and she had to turn away.

"Does it matter?" the blonde asked softly, smiling. She crept closer to the other woman, she wanted to feel her beloved's skin, and she wanted to make her smile again, because in her eyes, the black-haired woman was most lovely when she smiled. "The only thing I think about is that we will be together, and it's enough future for me."

Those were idealistic, romantic words the blonde was speaking. For the raven-haired one, they were far from reality, empty, vague. She wanted to plan her future, she wanted to know where she would stand in ten years' time, and she wanted to have a clear direction where she would head to.

"But you do realize that we can't be here like this forever, don't you?" she prompts, and there was a trace of annoyance in her voice, even though she still strokes the blonde's hair lovingly.

"That is exactly why I all the more want to stay focused on the present, you dummy", the blonde replied, her voice still lazily cheerful. She is teasing the raven-haired one, running her fingers around the latter's slender neck, scratching her chin and touching her lips in a sensuous fashion.

But to the blonde's unpleasant surprise, the raven-haired one caught her hand and ushered it away.

"That is not very helpful, is it?" the raven-haired reprimanded. "You know what I mean, so please don't pretend to be stupid."

Now it was the blonde's turn to be irritated. She was angry, because never before had her companion rejected her touch. She shot up and glared at her partner with vicious eyes.

"What would you want me to do, then?" she spat, and her voice had a ominous tone to it. "Would you have me start studying law in Tokyo University and start a company with you after we both graduated? Or would you perhaps like to employ me as your secretary and dress me in provocative outfits to cheer you up?"

Her voice regained some of its previous playfulness during the last sentence, but the black-haired one made the mistake of ignoring it, without even a quick smile. The latter was too lost in her musings, and to her own disgust she could already see them breaking apart. She felt utterly helpless in front of such dreadful visions, but years later she would reprimand herself so many times for not even trying to mend the rifts that had appeared between them.

"In fact, maybe I would. If you started studying for the entrance exams, at least you would have a goal and perhaps you would even start to show some concern for the future, which you are completely lacking", the latter said, crossing her arms steadfastly on her chest. Of course, she did not mean any harm, because she was only showing her concern in her own, although maybe not the most efficient way. "Right now I never see you doing anything but daydreaming and distracting me. I don't even know whether you are attending lectures."

"Shut up, because I don't give a damn."

"Maybe you should, because even I am not able to have patience with you forever."

Something broke with a loud snap inside the blonde woman. She could not believe what she was hearing, and neither did she want to believe. It was too much for her to hear such words from someone she had always believed would support her regardless of time and space. She only wanted to be with her beloved, to stay with her and love her no matter what, and what did she get for such dreams?

Involuntarily her thoughts turned to the events over two years ago, and memories of the fragile, exquisite girl drifted in front of her eyes. She saw their first meeting, she saw them locked in a tight embrace in the greenhouse, she saw them desperately kissing in front of the school building, and finally she saw herself standing in the metro tunnel, waiting, waiting, waiting, her shoulders becoming more and more hunched as her hopes became dimmer.

And she remembered the shattering sensation she had experienced when she had been told that the one she had been waiting for would never come.

"You are free to leave if you like", she shouts, her face twisting in torment. "Or would you feel better if I was a man? Would it be easier for you if this, _affair_, of ours seemed more conventional?"

She had said those cruel words only to hurt, and she knew it. Nevertheless, she felt brief enjoyment when she saw her words hit home as the black-haired woman flinched visibly.

"We both know that the last one was unnecessary", the latter said, and there was pain inside her, too, even though she was the aggressor in the situation. She admitted that she had been thinking about the fact that they were two women living together in an unclearly defined relationship, which nevertheless certainly was far from the ordinary in a society not known for its tolerance. She thought about her future career, and she feared that she would have to keep secret the person she was sleeping with, and the prospect filled her with revulsion.

Ten years later, she would curse herself for ever having had such foolish concerns. But back then, she was still young, and she did not know what was really important for her.

"We both know that everything you have said in the last few minutes were unnecessary, too", the blonde responded, and with her usual insight, she knew what her lover was thinking, she knew it only too well. She wanted to shake the woman she so desperately loved, her only anchor in the turbulent sea, she wanted to make the black-haired woman see some sense, but she was too tired, too disappointed to do so.

"Say what you will, but we are not children anymore. Just remember that", the raven-haired one stated bluntly.

The blonde said nothing. She was weary of all the demands, she was too exhausted to defend herself, she just wanted to sleep and to forget everything. She wondered what had she done to deserve all she had been forced to endure, but more than anything she feared that she would be abandoned once again.

And this time, there would be no-one to lift her up if she fell.

The black-haired woman was watching the blonde, and she could see how the latter was in agony, but she was not able to do anything for her even though she wanted to console her and make her laugh again. She could not make the anxiety surrounding her subside, and neither did she know what exactly it was she was anxious about. All she was certain of was that there was something wrong, but what she did not understand was that what was wrong had nothing to do with the blonde, but with herself.

"You keep repeating that like a mantra", the blonde said. "_You_ should remember that there is no-one forcing us to 'grow up', whatever that might mean. I love you, and I want to be with you no matter what."

Trapped inside her mind, the black-haired woman could not feel any pleasure even when she heard those beautiful words.

It was a heart-breaking scene, the two women in the same room, their minds inexplicably incompatible, both being unable to find comfort in each other even though they both cared for each other beyond imagination. One of them looked into the future so intently that she forgot the present, and the other was so tightly glued into the present that she denied the future.

The rain continued to fall, the raindrops drummed against the window glass fervently, and against the greyness even the White Rose seemed to have lost its colour. Whereas just moments ago they had both been so warm, now both could feel the chill on their skin. They were not yet cold, but even that day would soon arrive.

It was not about which one of them was wrong, but in the years that followed, it was the Red Rose who would feel guilty.

* * *

><p>"I think you are too hard on yourself", Shimako sighed.<p>

If she had been shocked to any extent by Youko's story, and Youko knew she had to be, she did a very thorough job to conceal it. The only thing indicating that it had not been just another session of small talk were Shimako eyes, which were glimmering strangely.

"I don't believe I am", Youko denied. "She always stood to lose more than I did."

Shimako shook her head softly, and her compassionate gaze lifted the final vestiges of the curse the retelling of the events had cast upon Youko. With Youko's words, the long ago buried story had come to life with such painful clarity that she had been caught in the middle of the scene like some spectator spirit, trying to change the course of events with all her might, but in vain. When the story neared its inevitable conclusion, only Shimako's presence had kept Youko's voice from breaking.

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean you should blame yourself so mercilessly", Shimako said, but Youko sensed the younger woman was only saying those words out of courtesy. The confusion in Shimako was apparent. "We both know Onee-sama, and I am sure she understands."

"You are right, she does, and that is the most unbearable part", Youko replied, nodding sadly. Knowing Sei, Youko had no difficulties to believe what the ever-optimistic woman had said to her when they had last met. "_I don't hold any grudge on you, and neither am I bitter. I might sound cynical, but after everything that has happened I am just neither idealistic nor innocent enough to risk a third end of the world. _"

Shimako lowered her eyes and stared at the table intently. Her hands were trembling; her body did not seem to be fully in control as she was making small, uncoordinated moves in her chair. The differences to her earlier posture were almost impossible to notice, but they were there.

Youko almost prayed that Shimako would not cry. She did not want to be responsible for yet another person's tears, although in the end it might not matter, because even the dead could have sensed the grief radiating from the beauty.

"That is so like Onee-sama", Shimako said finally, her voice so clogged and thick that even tears could not have made Youko feel any worse.

"I am sorry."

There was simply nothing else Youko could have said or done.

Shimako shook her head again, and her silken hair waved in the air as she did so.

"There is no reason for you to apologize for me", she whispered. "And as Onee-sama said, she doesn't want your apologies either. I don't want to patronize, but I sincerely think you should not have let her go, at least not for the second time."

…_not for the second time._

…_not for the second time._

…_not for the second time._

* * *

><p>AN: I actually was under quite a lot of pressure when I wrote this. Obviously this is a key chapter and I wanted everything to be perfect. It took me like 10 hours to write this and edit it, and in the end I can admit that I am relatively satisfied.

I don't hold any grudge against you, and neither am I bitter. I might sound cynical, but after everything that has happened I am just neither idealistic or innocent enough to risk another end of the world


	9. On Punity and Pizza Delivery Services

**8. On Punity and Pizza Delivery Services**

There was no turning back now.

That was the most outspoken thought in Youko's mind as she stared disbelievingly at the brown, wooden door in front her. It was without any eye-attracting detail, without any decoration that would have signalled to the rest of the world that residing behind it was Satou Sei. Everything from the polished frame to the round, metallic doorknob was so clinical and mediocre that Youko had a hard time believing that she had the correct address. Yet she was certain that she had not been mistaken.

It turned out to be even more difficult than she had imagined to knock on the door. She had prepared everything she would say, she had gone everything in her mind a million times, but she dared to venture that her plans would come to nothing as soon as she saw Sei. The presence of the White Rose was not something anyone could control, and Youko knew that every plan she had devised would be battered to nothingness by the forceful rays of Sei's radiance, but they at least offered some solace.

She made feeble attempts to address her dishevelled hair which had suffered greatly in the windy weather, and she checked one more time that her clothes were clean and tidy. She cast a final look upon herself from her pocket-sized mirror. She was wearing a blue cotton blouse over a freshly-ironed pink dress shirt, a cream-coloured skirt that reached to her knees and thin, dark stockings. She did not have high heels, because she had been afraid that with her excited heart she would not be able to walk properly in them. Her gleaming, black hair was still a bit messy, but having forgotten her comb, there was nothing she could do.

Holding her breath, she pressed the doorbell once, twice.

She had never been as afraid in her life as she was during those few seconds directly following the two bright rings. For a moment, she hoped that no-one would open the door, that she would be allowed to leave and regroup and face her destiny another day, but when she heard the approaching footsteps, an odd calm engulfed her. Suddenly, she was not shaking any longer, she was not even frightened. This was something she had to do, for the better or worse.

She ran her fingers through her hair one more time, and just when she had finished the motion, the door opened with a soft click, and warm light flooded the corridor.

* * *

><p>"Have you not heard that it is very impolite to show up on someone's door without any warning?"<p>

Even as Sei's voice was strangely monotonic and showed no signs of pleasure at seeing Youko, she went ahead to pour tea for the both of them. What Youko had feared the most was that Sei would turn her away, and as Sei asked her whether she wanted to have biscuits or not, it appeared that at least the worst-case scenario would not materialize.

She eyed wistfully at Sei, who was wearing a green bathrobe which only partly covered her legs. While admiring at her slender shins Youko to her own embarrassment caught herself speculating how it would be like to run her fingers on Sei's legs, to press her head on Sei's thighs, and she had to turn her eyes away abruptly to keep herself from blushing.

"Well, are you going to answer me?" Sei demanded as she finally sat down opposite Youko, her voice still somehow phlegmatic. Her hair was longer than during the last time they had met, and Youko noticed small black rings under her eyes. She was as strikingly attractive as ever, even with her inscrutable expression and somewhat worn-out appearance.

"I am sorry to intrude", Youko started, her nervousness resurfacing under Sei's cool gaze. She felt that the other woman could read her every thought, and knowing Sei she guessed that her fears were probably very well founded. "But there was so much I did not have time to say last time, and even though I realize that I am in no position to ask anything, I hope that you will listen to me. Then, if you want me to leave, I will go and swear that you will never see me again."

Looking at Sei's marvellous face, every part of Youko hoped and prayed.

Finally, Sei shrugged nonchalantly.

"Very well. You have time until I am finished with my tea."

* * *

><p>"I... I..."<p>

There was a knot inside Youko's head. It was a lump of thorns, lilies, a lump of regret, sorrow, feelings so strong that merely thinking about them could have made Youko's heart burst. And it was all glued together with blood and tears.

All the while Sei's eyes were fixed on Youko. Those incredible grey eyes which revealed nothing.

* * *

><p>The teapot was all but empty, and the only sound breaking the silence was the rhythmic drumming of Sei's fingers on the surface of the table.<p>

Youko could not open her mouth.

Was it pride that kept her from making her confession? Perhaps.

Whatever courage she had was evaporating. As anyone else, she, too, was afraid of being hurt. Sei had all the trump cards whereas she had nothing else to offer than her repentant heart.

* * *

><p>The wind had suddenly blown itself out, and it had started to rain. It was a gentle, nourishing drizzle, it would wash away the dust and afterwards there would be a stainless night.<p>

"Time is up", Sei said.

"I am sorry."

"I know that."

* * *

><p>"You have not made a single joke during all this time, have you?"<p>

Sei's face was like stone.

"Did I ever joke about Shiori?"

* * *

><p>Looking outside the balcony, Youko could see velvety darkness and cold, white light emanating from the depressing lamp posts, and the illumination was so devoid of warmth that it actually made the night seem darker. Below her she could still hear the sounds of life, probably good-for-nothings or youngsters, maybe both. Nobody else roamed the streets one-o'clock at night. Someone was swearing, and there seemed to be some quarrel going on, but Youko did not bother to look down.<p>

It was a modest residential area, no luxury condos or five-star restaurants nearby. On the other side of the street there was a small park for children, and a bit further down the road a elementary school stood tall. It was your average suburb on the outer hem of Tokyo. Nothing was exceptionally cosy, nothing was exceptionally displeasing either. No distinctive features. There must have been millions of similar places in the world, built to cater to the needs of the growing population, to keep the society functioning, to shatter any hopes one might have about one's supposed uniqueness.

Looking at the sky, Youko wondered how far the stars she saw actually were, and when had the light radiating from them started their journey towards the surface of the Earth. She did not even want to seriously think about the answer. She was feeling puny enough even without such grand considerations. Still, she could not stop wondering whether somewhere in the universe someone else was experiencing the same feelings as she was, whether the world she knew was only one among the endless dimensions and possibilities.

Perhaps, somewhere innumerable light years away, someone like Mizuno Youko was standing in something resembling a balcony and thinking about someone like Satou Sei. More probably, the whole scene happened only kilometres away from her. Japan was a big country.

_Don't you daydream about other dimensions, girl._

"Are you going to be there for long?"

_Not, when you can't even handle one._

* * *

><p>It was their fourth pot of tea, and not a word had been spoken.<p>

"I am hungry", Sei stated suddenly. "Let's call a pizza delivery service."

_Pizza delivery service... Pizza delivery service...Pizza...Delivery...Service..._

Youko was hearing something strange, something she had not heard for such a long time that her shoulders started shaking uncontrollably at the wildly insinuating sound. It was only then that she realized she was laughing.

And she could not stop, not even with her dignity of a Rose, not even with all her willpower. She was laughing so violently that tears were filling up her eyes, and when she wiped them away to look at Sei, she saw such a priceless expression in the latter's face that she would have given anything if she could have captured it in one perfect still life.

"Have you finally gone totally mad?"

"I... I just..." Youko's words trailed off as the laughter kept resurfacing every time she thought it was over. "I just can't believe that words like 'pizza delivery service' even exist."

"Why?"

Seeing Sei's dumbfounded face, Youko burst into, if possible, an even harder laughter. She stopped only after she was about to suffocate and her stomach was hurting as if it had been on fire.

"Isn't it obvious? One moment you are thinking about your meaningless existence in this meaningless corner of the universe and contemplating on how to convert into words such things that downright _can't_ be said aloud, and then a minute later someone says 'pizza delivery service'. It's crazy."

Slowly, very very slowly Sei's lips twisted into an uneasy grin.

"I guess it's kind of funny, yeah."

A final after-quake of laughter shook Youko.

"Call the 'pizza delivery service'. I'll have mine with shrimps, olives and onion."

* * *

><p>"I wonder who invented pizza", Youko mumbled, her mouth full. There was bound to be tomato jam and dough crusts all over her face, but for once she did not care.<p>

"Probably some Italian nobody who got enough of pasta", Sei quipped. "And I am grateful he or she did."

"This is actually quite good."

"Yeah, the only good thing in my life nowadays – the pizza delivery service near me", Sei said, smirking.

Youko shook her head over-dramatically.

"Be happy, because I don't have even that."

"What, you aren't saving the world from injustice every day? There isn't a harem of pretty girls hidden in your apartment, waiting to fulfil your every perverted desire?"

Youko raised her eyebrows, pulling a falsely clandestine face.

"No comments."

"Well, as long as you don't have my dear Yumi all by yourself, I don't care."

_As if I could ever look at anyone else than you._

"_Your _Yumi? She surely is married by now. She might even have children."

Sei winked.

"Oh, I would not be so certain", she whispered sensuously. "With the common history of ours, I dare say that even now chances are that she is lying on her bed, unable to sleep and her head filled with pictures of me."

_There indeed is someone who suffers from insomnia because of you._

"To think that you tried to corrupt even such a sweet little straight girl like her, naughty, very very naughty."

_But it's not Yumi._

"Well, I couldn't have just sat about and let her pass me by without even getting a kiss, could I?"

"You are a sick and twisted person, Sei."

"You are just jealous."

_And what if I am?_

Youko turned her gaze away from Sei, biting her teeth together. No matter how much she had to struggle to control herself, she did not want her mask to crack, neither did she want to spoil the small play between them. If only for a fleeting moment, it was as if nothing had ever happened, as if they were once again twenty, joking and teasing each other randomly, without even a smallest breach between them.

"In your dreams."

She was prepared to hear some nosy retort from Sei, but there came none. Instead, she saw the jester's mask fall off Sei's face so rapidly that it made her sick. Any gleam there had been in her eyes was now gone, and there was not even the slightest trace of a smile on the lips which had been grinning so naturally only minutes ago.

In such a cruel charade, both were going to get hurt eventually. Still, it came as a surprise and a shock for Youko that Sei had been the first one to break.


	10. Half Life

When reading this chapter, it is recommended that you at least read the previous chapter if you do not remember it very well, otherwise the mixing up of chronology I often do might seem a bit confusing.

Without further ado, enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>9. Half-Life<strong>

It was already May, and the coming of summer was on full throttle; on the outskirts of Tokyo lawns were almost wholly transformed from muddy brown to rejuvenated green, and wilted-looking trees had grown themselves new, nourished leaves. Even people seemed to gain new vitality; their smiles were just a tad bit more sincere, their bows a tad bit more polite. Still, seeing the ever-growing amount of discreetly kissing couples in the park always made Youko feel even more wistful than usually in the current time of the year.

Youko did not want to pity herself. She was clever enough to realize that there were a billion fates more abysmal than hers. Sitting in her apartment in front of the window and looking outside, she could not seriously consider herself unlucky. Unsurprisingly, in those days she thought about a lot of things. Apart from the more obvious considerations, she found herself more than once thinking about the war, in which even her grandparents' generation had been associated, and the whole notion was very hard for her to comprehend. She thought about her grandfather's brother, who had killed without regret, and when she contemplated such events long enough, they slowly began to lose all their meaning and it became even harder to grasp them.

What it meant for millions to die in a matter of days?

How much the world had changed, and in such a short period of time.

With every thought she gave to the dead, she became more and more certain that she herself was not entirely among the living.

But the modern industrial societies were not for daydreamers, and her own even less so than others.

_One foot in front of the other, bear with the pain accompanying every step and repeat the process so many times that the hurting feet and the bleeding heart were numb enough to stop complaining._

She did not pity herself, but she was anxious, and very much so.

And as she always did when she was in the mood, she reminisced. About the graduation, about her former peers, about the Yamayurikai, about the things she had gone over so many times before. And with every thought she gave to her former loved ones, the more unbearable her longing became.

Amidst her musings, her work never ceased to be any less demanding. What she had once seen as her calling was rapidly revealing its true self; covering up for endemically corrupt politicians and bureaucrats was exactly what it appeared to be and nothing else. As any ambitious person, she had wanted to make a difference, and searching for loopholes in her opponent's very valid arguments against her clients had whatsoever nothing to do with saving the world.

Admittedly, getting caught up in her past so tightly that she was unable to see the future had not been a part of her plans either. Yet, she often wondered where she did actually belong in. Back in the day she had been certain that Lillian with its high walls and pure maidens was not the place, but now, she could reverse her words with equal conviction.

As Sei had said with her exceptional, if somewhat erratic, wisdom, Lillian was not supposed to determine their lives.

_But if it did so, what is the point in struggling against it?_

Among those who had attended the graduation ceremony with her, most would only carry happy memories with them, memories which may have felt sad at the time, but which would slowly fade as time went by. Perhaps it really was rare for someone to get as hopelessly entangled in high school life as she had, so hopelessly that she would never be able to fully leave it behind her.

But it had been her choice, be it a conscious one or not, and there was no denying the desires of one's heart.

Suddenly, Youko's mobile phone came to life. Lazily reaching for the ringing piece of advanced technology, her irritated mind quickly became overwhelmed.

_Sei calling... _

…

_Answer?_

* * *

><p>"I think I should go."<p>

It was close to three at night, and even the hooligans outside had stopped making noise. The silence was absolute, it was a stifling, suffocating presence in the room.

"You should have gone the moment we finished drinking the first pot of tea", Sei sighed. "In fact, I believe you should have never come here."

"Don't say that."

Sei snorted, and there was the same ominous sound to her voice as there had been during that autumn night they had parted for the second time. Knowing how she had never been one to lose her temper, it was all very worrying for Youko.

"Now there comes the lecturer again. Won't you ever stop meddling in my life?"

"I will stop, if you sincerely ask me to."

"I think I have made it quite clear on more than one occasion."

Youko could have risen up, put her clothes on and left, and some part of her actually wanted to do so. She was sick of staring at her own fingernails and trying desperately to say something even though there was absolutely nothing she could have said. Some monster in her even wanted to grab Sei, to hit her and shake her until she would start smiling again, and then the same old naïve desire to forget everything was surfacing again, although Youko knew that if she were to leave she would spend the whole night thinking about all the things she should have done and said.

She had never been very good at making confessions.

"I… Do you think we are completely lost?" she spat vehemently, forcing the words out of her mouth. She had prepared tons of beautiful nonsense, but in the state she was in she could not utter any of those. And she had a strong feeling that Sei would not have appreciated them anyway. "Lost beyond any hope?"

Suddenly, it was Lillian in autumn all over again. Time stopped, and that overwhelming feeling of sensing everything around her with a million times more detail flooded over her. The fridge was humming almost imperceptibly in the small kitchen, a car was speeding outside, Sei's eyes were strangely unfocused and her lips were slightly trembling. Her outlandishly shapely face with its sharp features imprinted itself on Youko's mind, and the comparison with the other picture from last autumn was a striking one.

_Did it hurt so much to see me?_

"I don't know… I wish I did."

Youko was too tired to think what Sei's words meant, but her heart was racing anyhow.

"Do you care about finding out?"

There was no way Sei could evade the question now, and even though it was a terrifying notion, at the same time it was a consoling one.

"You once asked me whether I ever thought about the past, and I did not give you a proper answer", Sei muttered, her hands restlessly fingering the hems of her bathrobe she had been wearing for the whole day. Even now, it was hard for Youko not to think about how Sei would look underneath the flannel. "Yes, I do think about Lillian and the year following it. It's hard not to when your past sits right in front of you."

"I..."

"But you know, that is besides the point. I have relived that dreamy year so many times in my head in these past few months that sometimes I feel I am not truly even alive anymore. It's like a twilight existence. Whatever happened in the ten years separating us I can't remember, and whatever happens in the future I don't care. And I can't even smile to conceal it."

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said."

"For what it's worth, on many days I feel the same way."

Sei laughed hollowly.

"Since when have become like this?" she said, clawing her face with her fingers. "One day we were on the top of the world, then suddenly we find ourselves sitting in a lousy apartment eating lousy pizza, leading this half-life of ours and unable to break free."

"I wonder that myself", Youko replied, and she could not suppress a thin smile.

_If you only knew how very much alive I am right now._

"You could have had anything, Youko. A rich husband, an upper-class life with so many luxuries that your working-class parents would have turned green in disgust. You still can, if you only wish to. "

_You are right, perfectly right. I could have gotten married so many times that I have lost the count..._

"So could you, Sei. So could you."

_But all I want is you._

"You know, Shizuka asked me to go to Italy with her a month ago."

"She did?"

"Yes. And can you guess my reply?"

Youko held her breath.

But was it a terrible fate for her if Sei had agreed, after all? They would part for good, but at least she could have slept her nights at peace knowing that someone like Rosa Canina would constantly be watching over her most beloved one.

A white rose and a black rose, their branches intertwined, the leaves of the black rose sheltering the white one from rain.

"I said I loved her", Sei sighed. "And do you know what she said to me before she left?"

"..."

"She told me I should call _you_."

"You could become so happy with her. She loves you that much", Youko managed to say, her voice quickly getting thick. "Why didn't you go?"

Sei shook her head, smiling resignedly.

"Because I did not want to be even more cruel to her than what I have already been. You can't just wipe away the past if you decide so. The best we can do is to mutually agree to forget, and that is far from forgetting."

* * *

><p>"I met Shimako one day in a cafeteria."<p>

"You did? How was she?"

"She is doing fine as a painter. We have been seeing each other sporadically after Christmas. Last time we met, I told her about us."

"You did? Were you out of your mind?"

"She if anyone deserves to know, Sei. And I believe she had guessed pretty much of it anyway."

"I don't..."

"But more importantly,_ c_an_ you_ guess what she told me to do when we last met?"

"..."

"She said I should not have let you go. Not for the second time."

* * *

><p>Note: I have added the line breaks, which were missing by accident. Hope it clarifies things.<p>

More notes: Some typos fixed.


	11. The Memory of Running

Hi everyone, and sorry for the very long delay. Once again I would recommend reading the previous chapter (or even the previous two if you can't remember at all what has happened) to understand the chronology, especially if you have not been reading this fic recently. If something confuses you, feel free to PM me.  
>Enjoy!<p>

* * *

><p><strong>10. The Memory of Running<strong>

The humming of Youko's laptop subsided suddenly, officially marking the beginning of her summer holiday. She closed the curtains, tidied up whatever useful files still scattered on her table and disposed of the rest. Slipping into her black, slim-fit jacket, she gave her office one more glance.

Some people tried to make their work surroundings feel like themselves as much as possible, but Youko had never been one of them. There was not a single personal item in the clinically furnished room, not a single indicator that it had been used by a very real human being, as opposed to some android. Even her coffee cup was a plain white one.

In fact, when she had just taken up the junior position in her current company, she had filled her office with pretty decorations and nostalgic mementos from her past; blue flowers in ornate vases, small but detailed paintings, photographs from the old times… However, as she over time had started to feel less and less comfortable with her working life, she had more or less consciously removed all her personalized possessions from the room until it had become nothing but a cold husk, more like a concept of an office than a real one. Certainly no-one could have guessed that it was "home" to one of the company's long-time employees. Her changed preferences had aroused some confusion in her associates, but in her more mature opinion, trying to make herself comfortable while she was playing the role of a corporate lawyer was always going to be a futile effort.

Thus, she could hardly say that she was attached to her workplace in any manner. This time, too, she left her office resolutely, without looking back.

In the previous month, she had been strongly involved in a court case that had eventually resulted in their victory. The aftermath was predictable enough; enthusiastic smiles, a flood of congratulations, five-star meals written off as expenses… And during all the fairly lengthy festivities, her marital status had not been mentioned a single time. Youko could only wonder did they actually expect her to forget all the rumours that had been circulating about her and all the times she had simply _known_ they had been rolling their eyes behind her back just by making her the hero of the month and giving her a pay rise she should have already had years ago.

_Fuck you all_, she had wanted to say. _Give it a month or two and I will once again be what I have always been: a selfish freak and a sorry excuse of a woman._

Very few knew that Youko came from a working-class background, well outside the middle-class Japanese dream. She could bet that the aristocratic manner she had carried herself with in high school and in university had fooled almost everyone into believing that her father must have been a CEO rather than a construction worker, and she had never bothered to correct the misperceptions.

Driving her car out of the car park to the highway, for the first time in a long time she thought about calling her mother. She knew that doing so would result in nothing but grief, but she could not stop worrying about her parents. Although they had not had a proper discussion in over two years, and although Youko had absolutely no interest in explaining for the millionth time why she whatsoever had no intention of marrying a fellow lawyer and giving birth to a host of children, she still missed them and kept sending them money on a monthly basis. Her efforts never earned her any real appreciation, but she preferred to think of her "donations" as some kind of charity.

With her new salary, she could easily afford some additional expenses. When she thought about the amounts of money passing her bank account in the recent years, she would always have a surreal feeling. When she had been a child, she could have hardly believed such money even existed in the world, let alone that one day she would be one of those with the privilege to spend such astronomical sums. She could only guess what her parents would think if they knew she would be spending the last week of her summer holiday in Hawaii.

She had not been exactly the most cheerful person in the world during the past months, but pondering about the upcoming trip made her smile, if only very tentatively. In the autumn, she had dreamt about a vacation with a certain someone, but in reality there would be no Sei with her. However, there would be lots of sunshine, ice-cold pina coladas and pretty girls in swimsuits, although she highly doubted that she would be in the mood to enjoy seeing even the most beautiful of women.

Still, she was happy that she could at least to some extent think about Sei and even joke about her without feeling paralysing pain as in the winter. She did not miss her any less, on the contrary, sometimes it felt as if her heart was so filled with longing that it was about to burst, yet the longing was one of bittersweet nature, very unlike the heartbreaking anxiety she had felt only a few months ago. Sometimes she felt more like a teenager in love rather than an adult with a broken heart. Be as it may, at least they were talking to each other once again, if only through phone-calls which seldom lasted more than five minutes.

They never talked about anything special. It was all 'how-are-you' –s and 'yes-I-am-fine' –s, mostly their conversations revolved around the weather and what they had had for lunch, and Youko did not dare to hope for more even in her wildest dreams. Every time she heard Sei's voice chattering away about the usual nonsense she would feel her mind lighten up.

Her head filled with thoughts, her car was in front of her apartment before she had even noticed actually having departed from the city centre. As she stepped out of her Audi, she saw the blazing sun suspended on the blue canvas, against which the grey concrete blocks appeared even more unbearably ugly than usually.

Her mood suddenly becoming somewhat sullen, she hurried up the stairwell and upon entering her home, she collapsed straight on her bed, without even bothering to take off her shoes. All her official composure had rapidly unravelled, and in her current state of mind she found it hard to believe that she had been the coolly smiling office-lady only hours ago. The distance between the two personalities could have been several light years. Upon closing her eyes, she was quickly caught in a deep, dreamless sleep.

* * *

><p>"…Hello?"<p>

The black-haired woman's voice was trembling as she pressed the green button on her mobile phone. In the deepest reaches of her mind, she had been waiting for the phone to ring, she had been staring it so intently in the past days, hoping that by her sheer will alone she could have made it come alive. And now it finally had.

"It's me. Are you busy?"

The blonde woman on the other end of the phone was curled up on the floor, and from where she was sitting she could see her own reflection in the mirror. What she saw made her terrified. She looked tired. Old. Worn-out. Only a withered shadow of what she had once been.

She listened the woman she had called speak, and even amidst her pain she knew it was exactly what she was supposed to be doing.

"No, no, I am in the middle of absolutely nothing. Did you… Did you want to talk?"

There was so much she wanted to say. She was tired of her loneliness, she wanted to bemoan her sad existence, knowing that her friend would listen until the end of the world if need be. Her friend… It startled her that she was thinking about the Red Rose as a friend. Once upon a time she had been so disillusioned, so bitter, yet all the pain had not been enough to cut the bonds between them, and every time she heard the black-haired woman speak, the agonizing memories would always be intertwined with the euphoric ones.

"How have you been doing?"

Her tones were cheerful, her real mood less so. On the other end of the receiver, it was not hard for the Red Rose to hear the White one's plight seeping through the latter's falsely sweet voice. Yet she was not cheeky enough to blatantly call the bluff, even though she burned from the desire to do so, out of sheer concern more than anything else.

"It's still a dog's life, I tell you. I still feel like a horse, who has its eyes blindfolded and a carrot suspended in front of it, just close enough for it to smell it and desire it, but never close enough for it to reach it. I keep pushing on, but the distance between me and the goal line always remains the same."

She bit her lip. Knowing that her friend was not exactly in the best mood either, it had not been her purpose to blurt out such bleak visions, yet the words had simply escaped from her lips in an irresistible fashion. She noticed she was recently starting to have the bad habit of imposing her worries spontaneously on other people, and it was not something she was proud of.

"I am sorry, that was neither here nor there. To tell the truth, I am okay, I guess. The spring makes me feel happy and a bit wistful, as always. And I have been playing with this thought of booking a flight to Honolulu for my summer holiday", she continued in apologizing tones.

"Are you planning to go alone?"

"Well, yes… unless a certain someone wants to join me."

Their hearts skipped a beat, perfectly in synch. The raven-haired woman could not believe she had uttered those words with such cruel ease, and the fair-haired one was simply too overwhelmed to reply. The invitation was terrifying for them both, yet it attracted them as nothing else ever could.

The blonde woman was still carried back to the rainy day whenever she thought about her former love. She could see, almost feel, herself soaking wet, standing in the heavy rain, her drenched pangs in front of her eyes. She had not bothered to wipe them away, because she had not wanted to see.

Up until now, it had been all she ever remembered about the black-haired woman. But now, the pictures from the previous autumn were drifting in front of her eyes as well; the image of the former Red Rose standing in front of the Mansion, her face, her whole demeanour giving off the aura of bewilderment, and how sweet a scene it had been.

In the airport, the blonde woman had believed, or rather she had wanted to believe, that ten years had been enough for the scars to heal, enough to quench the hottest flames of passion and bitterness, enough for them to carry on with their lives without denial. She had been wrong, inexplicably, irrevocably wrong. But now, the moment in which they had gazed into each other's eyes in the courtyard of Lillian seemed as strong as the scene with the heavy rain. Had it been from a sappy movie, there would have been cherry blossoms floating around them, when they had lost themselves in the gripping nostalgia.

"I think this time there the certain someone has the pass the opportunity."

It had been too much, too soon for her to take, but her refusal was soft, friendly, and in the black-haired woman's ears, it held the potential for reconsideration.

"Yes, I think she should not waste her picturesque fair skin by sunbathing."

The blonde one laughed, and the other woman was quick to join her. They both hoped with equal fervour for their mirth to make all the darkness between them subside, if even temporarily, but at the same time they both knew with equal certainty that such thoughts were only naïve desires, and nothing else. Too much had happened for it all to be resolved in such a simple fashion, but even as they both wondered whether they had drifted too far to be connected ever again, their bond refused to be severed. Because as long as there existed a single happy memory, the human heart could hang on to it, and the more desperate it was, the stronger the grip became.

"I am tired of running, Youko. Whenever I even think about Lillian, my thoughts turn to you, and I can't stand it. But I don't want my life to be all about escaping from the past. Because is it not true that without memories one has not been alive at all? So I don't want to forget, or that is how I would like to think. When I am old, I don't want to have the memory of running as the sole memory from my youth. To tell the truth, I still can't honestly say that I am happy for meeting Shiori, let alone you. But I would like to believe that one day I might look back on those times and smile, even if I would still feel a sting in my heart. Then, I would be able to leave this world without having any regrets. Because then, I might feel that what has happened has been worth it. "

* * *

><p>AN: Sorry about the overflowing melodrama, if it annoys you. I just can't seem to get rid of it.


	12. Confusion, Shame, Red Roses

Phew, a new chapter is here, and you bet I am relieved that I was able to update sooner this time. Please read and review.

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><p><strong>11. Confusion, Shame, Red Roses<strong>

"Here, have one of mine. They'll make all your worries recede."

Youko eyed suspiciously the man sitting beside him. He had a square face, an unusually sharp nose untypical for Asians and shining black hair he had styled to look messy. There was little else to be seen, as he had huge sunglasses that covered almost half of his face. He was wearing a loose T-shirt and shorts. Judging from the carefree accent of his English, he was probably an Asian American.

It was not unusual for people to talk to her on airplanes, and often she favoured the company of unknown people over tedious, oppressive silence. But right now, she did not fancy the thought of conversing with the stranger, especially with her clumsy English which inevitably sounded ridiculous juxtaposed with his fluency.

"No, thank you. I have been eating too many sweets recently."

"Oh, that's a shame. Are you having a holiday?"

Youko muttered something affirmative, annoyed that the man chose to ignore her very explicit signals that she was not in the mood for conversation.

"Ever tried surfing? The waves in Hawaii are the greatest."

"Unfortunately, I have not had the opportunity."

"Now's your chance, then! The best surfing instructor in the world, at your service."

Although Youko was irritated, she could hardly stop herself from smiling to the man's pretentiously cheerful tone.

"Thank you for the offer, but I guess I will stick to the more conventional pastimes."

"Well, if you ever change your mind, feel free to contact me", the man laughed and turned his attention to the newspaper he had extracted from his backpack.

Youko sighed. She had not wanted to be rude, but she simply could not tune herself to her small talk mode. The whole purpose of her holiday was to get out of it, to give her some breathing and thinking space. It was a vacation she needed, and one she had sincerely anticipated. Nothing would make her forget the emotional roller-coaster of the past year, and neither did she want to forget it. She did want peace, though, after all that had happened. If any more tremors were to surface in her life, she feared she might not be able to take it.

Closing her eyes and inclining her seat backward, she half-seriously considered how it would be like to be with someone like the man beside her. Surfing, reading newspapers, eating peanut butter sweets… It would be a _normal_ life.

Youko hated that word. Normal. What did it even mean? For her, it had always been a word her relatives had used against her. She had not been normal in her ambitiousness, she had not been normal, living and sleeping beside another woman, she had not been and still was not normal, putting off marriage indefinitely.

Once she had been bitter about it, but now she was resigned to her fate. Someone had once told her that in life, every closed door opened another somewhere else. The ordinary life was behind a closed door for her, it had always been. It had opened her the door to the bliss she had caught a glimpse from during her first year in college, but that door, too, had been sealed shut before she had been able to slip through.

Slip through… To the bliss that had awaited her. Or had it? Had it all been an illusion? Destiny… Hawaii…

* * *

><p>"<em>Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving at Honolulu International Airport in fifteen minutes…"<em>

Youko had dozed off. Opening her eyes slowly, she looked around her, disoriented. People were moving restlessly on their seats, apparently eager to get off the plane. She opened the window shutter and looked outside, where the sun was blazing on a clear sky. The sea underneath her was deep blue, almost too purely so, and in the horizon she could see some islands scattered on the surface of the sea.

"You looked lovely when you were asleep", the man said quietly, but his voice made Youko start regardless.

"Well, thank you, I am flattered."

"You sure you don't want to try surfing?"

"Completely", Youko replied, smiling.

"Okay, I believe you, but feel free to change your mind. Here's my card, you can call me anytime."

Youko flashed another of her cool smiles and turned away, without even bothering to check the name of the man. His shamelessness bothered her a great deal. She made a mental note to burn the card as soon as possible.

The plane was losing height, and it was making her ears feel uncomfortable. To divert her attention, she started to think what she would do once she arrived in her hotel. She had not made any concrete plans for her holiday in advance because she had wanted to leave enough space for her impulses. Now, she was beginning to somewhat regret her decision as her destination was unstoppably drawing near. She knew that the magical ocean in the travel agencies' brochures would only be muddy water in reality, she knew that only too well. She had tried to avoid piling up too many expectations for her holiday in order to avoid being disappointed, but there was no way she could have managed to do that.

It was her well-deserved holiday after the year of working herself senseless, and if it was not to be perfect, it had to be a very good one, at least.

A loud thud followed the contact the tyres of the plane made with the runway. It made Youko feel just a little better. She had two secret weaknesses; fear of crowds was one, and fear of flying was another. She had been able to cope with the latter one quite well, but she still felt a wave of relief surge over her as she acknowledged the plane was no longer in the air.

Soon the plane came into a full stop, and the safety belt –lights went off with a beep. It was followed by a loud buzz as everyone rose up in a flurry, discreetly pushing each other out of their way as they reached for their luggage above them. Youko, who could not stand unknown people touching her, let alone pushing her around, sat calmly in her seat, not even bothering to unfasten her seatbelt yet.

She had somehow gotten over her fear of flying, but her dislike of crowds had persisted. For her, it had always been a terrible thought that there were so many people in the world not giving a damn about each other, and she hated the indifferent way people pushed and squeezed each other. Whenever she was forced to use the Tokyo underground during the rush hour, she would feel the very real sensation of suffocating.

Also, she would feel lonely. She would want to scream so that everyone could hear her, she would want to make them understand the underlying perversion in all of it, and what she feared the most was not that they would not listen, but that they would all nod politely and smile patronizingly.

_So what if we are living in an advanced capitalist mass society? So what if we have strayed far from the roots of humanity, so what if life does not go according to the stories told to the children? _

Suddenly, Youko wanted to cry. Something was constricting her heart, it was painful like nothing else, and she wanted to scream, vomit and faint at the same time.

_Someone, please save me._

_Please._

Suddenly, the man with sunglasses who had already been on the aisle was beside her_._

"Candy? I assure you will feel better if you eat this. I always do when I am sad."

Youko could not move. Even when the man tied his arms around her, she was not able to resist. She could only watch as he peeled off the wrappings from one of his repulsive sweets and slowly put it into her mouth. The disgustingly sweet taste exploded in her mouth, and only that awakened her from her comatose state.

"It's all right, everything will be alright", the man said, but the way he said it made it sound almost ridiculous.

"Don't touch me. Who…"

Youko's voice had come out as cold as steel, but it quickly faded away to nothingness as she realized the shades had dropped from the man's face when he had reached for her in one swift motion.

"My apologies, I don't think I remembered to mention my name. Then again, it was on the card I gave you, if you had only given it a glance."

He was now speaking very fluent Japanese.

"_You…!_"

* * *

><p>"Forgive my earlier rudeness. I did not recognize you, Mr. Kashiwagi."<p>

"You don't have to talk _that _formally, revered Rosa Chinensis. The fault was partly mine;I did not want to be recognized too soon. Also, I should apologize for being so shameless earlier. I had to pull a show."

After the scenario on the airplane, Kashiwagi had taken care of everything from retrieving their luggage to ordering a taxi, and they had arrived to Youko's hotel in no time. Now they were sitting in the hotel restaurant, she had finished an omelette and an ice-coffee Kashiwagi had bought her, and she was feeling somewhat embarrassed.

She had no idea what it was all about, but seeing Kashiwagi made her uneasy. It was not only that he was the heir to a huge business empire, because Sachiko had been one too, and she had never had any problems in handling her petite soeur. What Kashiwagi had always had was his overflowing confidence, which positively radiated from his face. She was not used to such self-satisfaction, self-centeredness, almost arrogance, and it was as ridiculous as it was upsetting.

"I am afraid I don't understand what is happening. Forgive me if I am wrong, but I guess that our meeting was not pure coincidence."

Kashiwagi laughed.

"Yes, you are right, it was not. If you want to know, a certain someone sent me to look after you."

Youko had expected something like this deep inside her mind, but still actually hearing it made her gape like a fish on dry ground. She could see Kashiwagi's amusement in his eyes, and only through extreme effort could she compose herself.

"I am very sorry for causing you so much trouble. But, may I ask for a more detailed explanation? You must understand I am confused by this unexpected meeting."

"It was a few weeks ago, I think, when I met Saa-chan, and she told me that Ms. Toudou had called her and expressed concern for you. Because I was planning to go on a vacation to the Hawaii's anyway, Saa-chan kindly asked me to fit my schedule according to yours and keep an eye on you. That we actually ended up in the same plane beside each other was a pure coincidence, though."

"Shimako told Sachiko and she asked…? But how…?"

"Yes, she did. And don't bother asking about the details on how I was supposed to find you, it is not important. In fact, I should not even be telling you this, but I believe there is nothing to be gained by secrecy. It is not as if we are strangers, more like old friends. As far as I understand Saa-chan, I think right now she is very worried about her grande soeur, and I am sure Saa-chan would be glad to hear from her."

* * *

><p>Youko was disoriented, to say the least. Through the window of her luxurious hotel room, she could see a swimming pool where there were children swimming with their parents, and beyond the hotel grounds there were a few patches of vegetation before the beach began. It was a peaceful, relaxing sight, but she could not feel calm.<p>

Kashiwagi had retreated to his hotel a few kilometres away from Youko's, but his presence lingered on Youko's mind. She could see his casual, yet challenging posture, hear his velvety voice filled with sardonic amusement, and it unsettled her. She was ashamed of her own weakness in front of him, she was ashamed that Shimako and her petite soeur, who were both younger than her, felt a need to take care of her. She had hoped that she would be all right and would need support no longer, but the affair on the plane had proven her wrong.

But of all people, why did it have to be Kashiwagi who saw her weakness?

If it had been up to her, she would have of course fancied a meeting with Sachiko a million times more than with the latter's glib cousin, but the Ogasawara heir could not possibly have personally tended to everyone from her past she was concerned about, could she?

But Youko did want to meet Sachiko, Kashiwagi's words had made her realize that. The two former Red Roses had cared for and loved each other very much, but their relationship had been more like a conventional high school friendship than a deep bond between souls. They had never been as close as some of the other pairs in Lillian, so it had been almost natural for them to slowly drift apart after graduation, and their separation had been underlined after Youko's first year in college. After graduating, Sachiko had begun to take more and more responsibilities as the Ogasawara heir, and at the same time Youko had become more and more closed inside her own, dark world following her break-up with Sei.

Now, she regretted that she had been so distant, to Sachiko as well as to everyone else.

Sighing deeply, she reached for her backpack and dug out her laptop. She had not planned to spend the first hours of her holiday in front of a computer screen, but she was afraid that if she did not write to her friends right away, she would not be able to muster the willpower to do it later either.

She shook her head. Her holiday had hardly started off according to plans.

* * *

><p><em>Dear Sachiko,<em>

_how long has it been? A year, five years, a decade? It certainly feels like a lifetime since I last sat down in front of my laptop and typed your address to the receiver's field on my webmail application. For a moment I considered using the traditional mail, but I decided against it, as it would have been too slow._

_I am sorry. For not being in contact with you, for neglecting my duty as a grande soeur, for making you concerned, for troubling you and Mr. Kashiwagi. A very wise person told me some time ago that, for those younger than us who were in Lillian, we were Roses, mighty, almost omnipotent beings, and we were supposed to look out for the younger ones, not the other way around. I am aware that it might sound silly to think about the relationship between us as something still defined by us once being soeurs, but it is so hard to think outside that box. So, I am ashamed, and I am sorry._

_Knowing you, I assume you are doing well. I hope you are not pushing yourself too much. I know I might not be in the position to say it, but just remember that you don't have to be perfect. I would love to know what you have been up to lately, if you still want to tell me._

_I guess it won't surprise you that I have not been in contact with the others from Lillian, either, not after my first year in college, and that was an eternity ago. Looking back on it, I realize how foolish it was, replying to their (as well as your) emails with such cold brevity, never taking a good deal of time to call them, let alone see them (or you). I wanted to move on, but too late did I notice that I had taken a path which would only lead to a dead end._

_You know, I visited Lillian last autumn with Sei. It was such a surreal experience, because nothing had changed there. If I had not known the students of our time, I would have had no way to know whether time had passed or not. And yet it has been almost eleven years by now, but it consoles me that there are some places where time holds no meaning._

_I think it was that visit and its aftermath which changed the course of my life. I don't know how much you have been able to piece together about the events of that summer when I stopped coming to the Yamayurikai gatherings, and I don't know whether I am ready to share those experiences with everyone just yet. But I would like to, one day. One day, I would like to see everyone gathered around a table, smiling, laughing, just like before._

_Forgive me for imposing myself on you. Recently I have been speaking too much of myself and caring too little about other people, and I regret it. One day, I would again like to be the Meddler Sei used to call me. I look forward to hearing from you. If you are in touch with the others, please let them know I am thinking about them._

_Kind Regards,_

_Youko_

* * *

><p>AN: Just had to include the term "Saa-chan". Such a lovely pet name, don't you think?


	13. Interlude: Sei

Hello to everyone. Sorry again for sinking to oblivion, but I am doing my best. Inspiration is a fickle thing, and not always something I can reach. Maybe I needed a rest from writing (be it essays for uni or fics). But I hope you can enjoy this chapter. Please R&R. Thank you.

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><p><strong>Interlude: Sei<br>**

_Do you ever think about the past?_

Maybe unfortunately for me, I did, even as I pushed my trolley onwards at the Hawaii International Airport, even as the rhythmic screech emanating from the wheels grinding against the smooth marble floor clogged my brains, making it so difficult to think about anything coherent. Other than the past.

The walls were filled with oversized advertisement posters, and judging from their almost spotless polish, they had been pasted there very recently. Their colours were too bright, their images too beautiful, and yet I almost wanted to be deceived by them. The almost imperceptible dots of black and brown that spoiled the impression could only be seen by someone with exceptionally sharp eyes or someone, who had little else to do than to press every minuscule detail around her in her mind. In other words, someone like me.

Looking out of the window, I saw some seagulls fly through the air, and I thought they must have had strayed far from their nests. Just like myself. The steel birds were ascending and landing, too, and the broad runways seemed to boil under the radiant sun.

It seemed as if my blood was boiling, too. The sensation which mixed simple uneasiness with something almost resembling suffocation had plagued me since I had left my apartment back in Tokyo. My eyes could not rest no matter where I looked, because everywhere were disturbing sights - Hostile-looking people, their faces twisted to resemble monsters rather than humans, and they eyed strangers as if they all were heaps of filth rotting in a bin; subtle cracks on the walls, small blots of dirt where there should have been none, and I found myself imagining how the cracks would spread and the walls would break down, how the dirty spots would grow larger until they had consumed everything around them… Amidst all the ugliness, there were people that might have once struck me as pretty, but now they were nothing but creatures of grey, unable to captivate me for a single second.

Yet at the same time, the rational part in me was certain that nothing I now found repulsive differed in an elementary way from the very same things I had once been attracted to. It did not take a prophet to understand that it was me who had changed, and in such an irrevocable fashion that what had once held meaning for me had become nothing. Except for one.

The corridor to the exit seemed to stretch on forever, and I walked, walked and walked... My feet were suddenly hurting, although the distance could not have been a long one, but as I so well knew, one's imagination could be the most powerful force in the world.

When I finally could see the exit before my eyes, I was so tired that I soon found myself sitting in the airport cafeteria. The coffee was bleak, and I could hardly force myself to swallow even a mouthful of it. Instead, I concentrated on whisking the coffee with the spoon. The phenomenon I created was curious in its absurdity; dark liquid and white foam, an occasional splatter on the table, the clinging voice of the spoon against the clay.

As I was performing my small childish act, my eyes were almost instinctively scanning the people going about the airport. Had I been younger, I surely would have found someone beautiful enough to make an impression amidst the exhausted-looking clientele, but now, there was no-one to pique my interest.

An exceptionally tall Asian woman in a somewhat provocative outfit consisting only a miniskirt and a sleeveless shirt with a low cleavage swept past me, and for a moment my gaze lingered on her beautiful long legs and shapely bottom, but it was a fleeting attraction, gone as soon as it had awakened.

Had I been my past self, it would have taken little effort for me to write my apathy off with a laugh and a few witty remarks. But now, I was already thirty, I looked like anything but my former, charming self, and every confident joke would be like a crude replica of a truly authentic painting lost long ago to the fangs of time. Too many times had I been horrified by my appearance, and while the dark rings around my eyes could be healed by a good night's sleep and a decent dose of happiness, the grey strands in my hair and the wrinkles on my forehead could not.

A wrinkle for every moment which had bended my heart, ten for every moment which had broken it; it was a thought I had once played with. Still, although I had already had my good share of heartbreaks and wrinkles along with them, I was irresistibly drawn to the single thing which had caused me most pain and which would most likely continue to do so. Like a moth towards a flame.

Once I had been the flame around which so many had circled, and one day I had woken up from my dream to discover my new self as the moth, who could not avoid getting burnt, but who nevertheless did everything get closer to the one thing she could never reach. It was a childish endeavour, a foolish crusade against my past.

It was not as if I had any choice. On some days, there was little else I could do than think about her. I imagined how she would appear again on my doorstep, how I would forget everything under her wilful stare and how I would slowly make every bit of her composure unravel as I made love to her once again… And on other days, I could almost go on living as usual, notwithstanding the vast emptiness inside me, and on those days my only feelings towards her were those of bitterness and even hatred. She had been the one I had trusted myself to, the one I had expected to always stand behind me in the case I fell. Maybe it would have been better if we never had fallen in love, I would think. Then the bonds between us could have remained unshattered.

There hardly passed a day upon which the the past did not cast its shadow. I did not know what was easier for me; to try to forget her and carry on as if she did not exist, or to pursue her in the hope of discovering some common ground we still shared.

Sometimes I wondered whether she felt the same way towards me. I wondered whether she also spent her nights thinking about me, about all those happy and less happy moments we had shared, about the bliss we could have had, and about all those intractable obstacles that had stood in our way.

Be as it may, I did not know if it held any meaning. Had I not come to Honolulu, whether she was thinking about me would not have mattered at all. Yet, here I was, in this remote island where I could not not help feeling out of place, where every smiling face sunbathing on the beach would make me feel like an abomination.

* * *

><p>The hotel I had reserved for a week was quite decent considering the very humble price I had paid for it. My room was stripped bare of any comforts or decorations, but it had everything I needed. I flung my luggage on the bed and proceeded to check the bathroom, which also turned out to be very efficiently cleaned. Not that I would have cared much had it not been.<p>

The next hour or so I spent lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. My head was like an eggshell whose contents had been sucked out, and I could not move a limb to save my life. The travel exhaustion had crept on me stealthily.

I had no idea what I would do next. My childish mind had probably expected her to show up as soon as I arrived, as if Honolulu had been some small fishing village and not a metropolitan city. Even though I knew it was the most sensible thing to do, I could not pick up my phone. I still wished for some miracle to happen which would throw us together in some romantic coffee shop in some back alley downtown, or maybe I wanted to wait for her to descend upon me as soon as she sensed my presence, like some omniscient angel.

In the end, I did pick up my phone. But I did not call _her._

Instead, Shizuka's sleepy, but amazed voice greeted her.

"Where are you, Mrs. Sei? The lines keeps hushing strangely."

It was not a call I had made acknowledgingly, but maybe my fingers were so used to typing Shizuka's number whenever I felt down that they had acted according to their instincts. This time, too, her number had appeared on the screen faster than it would have been to look it up from my contact list.

"How many times have I told you to stop addressing me so formally? It makes it sound as if we were strangers", I rebuked softly, more out of old habit than because it really bothered me. "And to answer your question, I am at my hotel in Honolulu. Don't ask why I am here, I guess it's just one of these impulses of mine."

"I see", Shizuka replied slowly. "A vacation might do you good."

I sighed. It was obvious that she realised something was going on, something more than just an escape from my dull existence back home.

"To tell the truth, the real reason why I am here is not because I need a vacation, as you might have guessed. _She_ is here, too."

I could almost feel her muscles tighten at the other end of the receiver. A brief silence ensued before she spoke.

"Are you..."

"No, I am alone", I interrupted her. "But that was not the reason I called you, to talk about her."

Silence again, as Shizuka waited me to continue.

She was such a darling, such a jewel, so adorable that it made me disgusted with myself every time we spoke. Especially if our discussion even remotely touched the subject we were not supposed to talk about. Had my lover been anyone else, could I have even mentioned Youko without an outrage? I guessed not. Yet whenever I confided to Shizuka, I did not get derisive gazes or temper tantrums, but sympathetic smiles and comforting embraces.

"I just wanted to hear your voice. It gives me comfort", I said finally.

"I am happy to hear that. I have missed you, too."

Her voice was velvety, and in an instant the translucent image of her drifted in front of my eyes. The calm, ever-understanding Rosa Canina.

"But what I really wanted to tell you is… is…

My voice trailed off. If I sometimes thought that my relationship with Youko was doomed, I held even less illusions about my involvement with Shizuka. She had been somewhat obsessed with me for who knows how long, but for me there was little else than raw physical attraction and the weak reciprocal feelings that her magnificent ones made me reflect back. I knew she would have wanted to take me to Italy with her, and I knew with equal certainty that she realised it was something which would never happen. Sometimes, her love for me hurt me more than her indifference could have. Oftentimes, I hoped I could love her as much as she loved me.

"…I am sorry", I forced the words out. "I truly am."

To my surprise, Shizuka chuckled.

"You don't have to keep telling me that every time we talk. That way, I don't have to repeat myself, either. Now, hopefully for the last time will I say that there is no need to apologize."

"Yeah, I guess there isn't", I admitted, but my voice conveyed a wholly different message, and I was sure she had no difficulty in reading it. However, she did not pursue it further, and I was grateful for that.

We went on to talk about some inconsquential matters. She told me about the poor weather in Rome, and in return I recounted what I had been doing in the past weeks. Our discussion soon took the usual course. I asked whether there had been any significant developments in her career, but there had been none. She could make ends meet, but the road to positive stardom still had not opened to her.

At some point of our chatter, I wondered how much I actually knew about the person called Canina Shizuka. All she ever told me about herself was how she had performed in yet another club or theather, and I never asked about anything else. When I thought about it, she could have had a whole life I did not know about; an Italian girlfriend, boyfriend, anything, and I would be totally oblivious. As opposed to me, she never shared the mornings when she would look at the mirror and be appalled by what she saw there, neither did I hear about the times when she had been immobilized by the fear of the crowd or when her homesickness had reduced her to tears. There must have been a few of those less glorious moments as well, but for me, she was always the promising opera singer yet to make her impact and who would always arrive at the airport with such an exquisite polish that it made me look like a scrap of filth in comparison.

"What do you make of us?" I interjected, so suddenly that she broke off in the middle of her sentence.

"I mean, what will come of us? Where will we be in five, ten years time? My life is a mess all right, but I don't want to get you tangled up, too", I tried to clarify, but I made no sense even to myself.

A brief silence.

"In one of her letters to me so many years ago, Mrs. Shimako tried to describe you to me. I think I still remember a line she told me you had once said. I cannot recall the exact words, but I think I undersood then that I would not reject love, even if it would last only for a moment. And frankly, I think ten years is much more than just a passing moment."

* * *

><p>In the pictures hanging in the travel agencies' offices, the sand on the beaches were golden, and the seawater was like liquid sapphire. But when I took it in my hands and studied it closer, it was nothing else but ordinary water. To make sure, I poured some of it in my mouth. The saltiness made me gag.<p>

But I enjoyed looking at the ocean, even if it was not as magical as the salesmen claimed it to be. From where I was standing, I could see the open sea stretching into the distance, the all-encompassing blue just never ended, and not a single island dotted its surface. There was something magical and immensely powerful in the sight, which was wholly different from anything I had ever witnessed before. Many times in my youth I had seen the archipelago sea in Japan, but compared to the pure, unrestricted and untamed blue it was like a piece of charcoal juxtaposed with a flawless diamond. I had a vague feeling that if I continued to stare for long enough, I would become one with the sea and all of my earthly worries would become like teardrops to be washed away by the ocean current.

Some children ran past me, splashing water all around them as they chased each other and shouted like there was no tomorrow. The small waves they left in their wake disturbed the almost surreal stillness of the ocean, and the ripples caressed my belly, temporarily filled my navel with seawater, and the cheerful sounds broke my concentration and forced me to acknowledge my more immediate surroundings once more.

_What am I doing here?_

Exasperated, I started to walk towards the shore. The sand was soft to tread upon, and the water was so clear that I could see my feet and the small scallops scattered on the ocean floor. I made sure not to step on any of them.

Back on the shore, I curled up under my parasol and took a sip from my pina colada every time the heat got to me. My eyes drifted among the folk gathered around me. So many scantily clad people around me, and still not a cute girl in sight.

Three days of my precious holiday had already passed, and I had not made a single move to achieve the goal I had set myself. Three days of aimless wandering on the streets, as if I could really spot Youko if I kept doing that long enough. Three days of waking up with the feeling of misplacement, as if I were a refugee left destitute in the wake of war. Three days of falling asleep in my uncomfortable hotel bed, surrounded my nothing but darkness, and never in my life had I felt so alone.

I knew I had to make a move soon, before what life I still had in my grasp would escape forever. But for now, I would allow myself one more day of cowardice.


	14. The Rollercoaster of a Reunion

Woohoo! Riding on the high tide of creativity (or boredom) I have completed the next chapter. It seems that I have a habit of writing this fic in short bursts and then fall into oblivion for ages... But remember to keep enjoying and reviewing! ^_^

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><p><strong>12. The Rollercoaster of a Reunion<strong>

The reply from Sachiko came three days after Youko's initial message, and it was very brief, stating only her delight at the latter's mail and that she would write a more detailed reply once she could take some leave from her duties. Youko had expected nothing else from her former soeur, but nevertheless she had been somewhat disappointed. In contrast to Sachiko's brevity her own dramatic words felt embarrassing.

With a gigantic yawn, Youko turned her laptop off. It felt as if during the past few days she had spent more time in front of her computer than not. Outside the weather was as sunny as ever, seagulls were suspended against the blue sky, a picturesque image of the perfect resort. It was only noon, but already Youko was tired enough to sleep. Too much time in front of the screen, and too little time spent as she should have: swimming, sunbathing, maybe even getting drunk.

Kashiwagi had not showed his cocky face since the first day, and of that she was grateful, although his foul presence still lingered on in her mind. She did not know when she had come to dislike Sachiko's cousin so much. Years ago she had respected him, and although she still did so, albeit grudgingly, the topmost feelings for him were those of a more negative nature. She was sure that for the whole time they had been together, he had been secretly laughing at her.

She crossed her fingers on the table and let her upright posture slump a bit. Barely thinking about Kashiwagi seemed to drain her. To refresh herself, she went to the bathroom and poured some cold water on her face. It made her eyes prickle, but eventually it did awaken her enough to stop her from just curling up in her bed and falling asleep. Instead, she walked over to the window and gazed out, resting her arms on the ornate windowsill.

She did like it in Hawaii, of that there was no doubt. Or rather, she could have liked it in some other circumstances, had she not been so occupied with her thoughts along with everything which was going on. To say that she was confused was a terrible understatement; it was as if the currents of destiny were revolving around her, brushing her gently and maybe even trying to subtly guide her somewhere. Almost, almost she could see the paths opening in front of her and where they led to. Still, whenever she sought to see with clarity, a sudden fog appeared and clouded her vision.

She wondered whether Sachiko would really remember to reply, and if she did, what would follow. Secretly, she dreamt of a high school reunion of Sachiko's doing, of seeing everyone once again, laughing, teasing each other, gossiping about what had been going on with them… It was something she did not have the right to hope for, but she missed her old friends so much she could hardly stop herself.

Looking down, she could see some children playing in the hotel courtyard and some young couples holding hands in the outdoor cafeteria. It felt soothing to watch the smiling strangers, giving her comfort to see that not everyone was captured within her own sense of loneliness and aimlessness, and that for some people the daily chaos did not present itself as something dreadful, but rather as something which simply provided unexpected opportunities for merrymaking.

Some moments later, when Youko had gotten enough of being idle, she packed some elementary stuff into a shoulder bag and left her room to explore the town she had not yet made herself comfortable with. Downstairs, the same children she had observed were still playing their hard-to-understand game, and the young couple was still discreetly showing their infantuation towards each other.

Once outside the courtyard, she hailed a taxi which had been waiting in the car park.

"Where to?" the driver asked as she entered the comfortably air-conditioned vehicle.

"Just drop me somewhere downtown."

The driver seemed to be pleased enough by Youko's vague instructions, and soon as the taxi boarded the highway, she leaned her head on the cool window and concentrated on gazing at the roadside.

The road followed the seashore for a while before taking a turn towards the inland. The coastline was fairly pretty, but somewhat monotonic, and little by little the pictures in Youko's eyes became a blur, her head slid unconsciously down the window, until eventually all she could see was the black colour of the inner surface of the door.

"Are you all right, Miss?"

A shockwave jolted through Youko.

"Yes, I just dozed off."

Her voice was stiff, and she shot up quickly like a bowstring.

For the rest of the journey she sat straight like a statue, not permitting herself even a single shake or shudder.

The taxi left her close to the Waikiki district, and once outside the car, she soon hoped she had never left it. Not having any concrete plans as to what she was about to do, she decided to wander down the street until something interesting presented itself. It was close to the rush hour, so the streets were filled with people coming and going about their business; as was to be expected, swarms of tourists were on the move, many dressed ridiculously in aloha shirts and shorts with colours beyond description. Once in a while, Youko heard tones of a familiar language as groups of Japanese-looking people passed her by.

People were not supposed to travel to places like this alone, she thought as yet another bunch of laughing youngsters advanced towards her. No matter what she did, no matter where she went, everywhere were reminders of her loneliness. It took the taste away from every bite of food she managed to eat and every cold drink she managed to swallow, and what joy she might have so easily felt had there been someone else with her was trying to escape from her her in a way that forced her to roll up her sleeves and go looking for it even from the most obscure places.

Despite her musings, she was able to enjoy her afternoon at least in a limited fashion. After wandering around for some time, she ate in a decent restaurant, found some bargain-priced clothes and managed to purchase some token souvenirs for her associates. For herself, she bought a magnet with a picture of Honolulu's skyline. Honolulu would join Shanghai and Los Angeles on the door of her fridge.

When the sun had already fallen way below the surrounding skyscrapers, she sat on a bench in a park and inhaled the faint ocean breeze which still seemed to be perceivable, if only barely through the fumes of the city. Youko could also sense the smells she was so familiar with in the air, albeit in much lesser degree than back in Tokyo: the hectic feeling so characteristic of larger cities, worry mixed with a certain degree of general restlessness and loss of direction.

Deep inside, she knew she could not accuse her surroundings for the anxieties that nestled inside her. She also remembered the time when the hustle and bustle had felt so comfortable that she could have never imagined living anywhere else than in the bumping heart of the Japanese capital. Back then, the sensations that had shot through her when she had feared of drowning in the sea of people had felt more like a spice than a disability.

Sei used to tease her about it, and the jovial woman would take them to stand in the middle of Shinjuku station during the worst rush hours, and when Youko's eyes were too blurred and her knees too weak to stand straight, she would lean against her lover and feel her strong arms around her. And thus, Youko would be reminded how much she needed her love. It had felt like a cruel trick, as if she had been taken advantage of, and she still considered it one of Sei's less amusing whims. But time had the habit of shrouding everything with a blanket of gold, especially the memories with the person one pined for the most, and now Youko was not sure whether it had really been that bad. Sei had assured her it had been for her own good, and had Sei not allowed Youko to take solace in her arms? Had Sei not given her much more than her fair share of attention afterwards? If only there was someone to console her in the present too. If Youko only could still crawl into Sei's embrace every time she felt battered down and catch a glimpse of the thing that came closest to peace among all the imperfection.

It was not as if Sei had not had her weaker moments, too. It never had been as one-sided as Youko always recalled it. As the rainy day so long ago and that Christmas Eve even before that had showed, Sei had never fully been the invulnerable, almost divinely omnipotent being she perhaps set out to be. She used to shine in a way that left everything and everyone awestruck in her shadow, in Youko's eyes she still latently did, but even demigods had their weak moments. It was a heavy burden on her shoulders, the fact that she was not the only one in plight.

"You look sad, pretty lady. Did your grandmother die?"

Startled, Youko looked up from her fingers only to see a small boy staring at her with big, curious eyes. The child could not have been much more than five, and he had bright, shoulder-length yellow hair framing his rosy cheeks and strikingly blue eyes. Youko was taken aback, not knowing what to reply. She could not even muster a friendly smile or pat the child on the head.

"My grandmother died last week, and everyone was sad", he continued, when Youko remained silent.

"I am sorry."

Her tone was totally unsuitable for the situation. She uttered the words far too gravely, far too heavily, and her eyes could have been brimming with tears and she would not have been surprised.

The boy was about to say something, but just then his mother hurried to him across the lawn and Youko ceased being the centre of his attention. His mother gave Youko an embarrassed look and muttered a muffled apology. Youko shook her head briefly and smiled, and the mother turned away holding the boy's hand firmly in hers. They had not gotten very far when the boy turned to look Youko, who waved back. She followed him with her eyes, fixed them on the blue t-shirt he was wearing. The path the boy trod with his mother curved, and soon they joined other strollers, the colours of their clothes mixing together in a bizarre mess. A bit further down the road when the park area gave way to the highway, he turned again, but this time she only remotely acknowledged him.

A flash of long, wheat blonde hair against a pink polo shirt. A glimpse of a neckline too slender, a nose a bit too sharp to be Japanese.

Youko's heart skipped a beat, her head suddenly started feel dizzy. All sounds were muffled, all motion around her abruptly seemed in their absurdity to be from a puppet show. She was sure that if she had reached her hand to touch one of the people walking by her, her hand would have passed right through. Nothing seemed to be rooted very tightly in reality.

A ghost town.

A planet of phantoms.

When she next could feel the heat on her skin again, the pink shirt had disappeared behind a wall of gray.

Like a ball lightning, she shot up from the chair and broke into a gallop. Her high heels clattered against the stony pavement, and more than once she was close to tripping and twisting her ankle, but she forged on, her bag shaking wildly along. People turned to watch when she either speeded past them sweeping them with her shoulders or blatantly pushing them out of her way.

Eventually she ended up overtaking the boy and his mother when she crossed the road across which she had seen the person who must have been _her_, and she was lucky to have had the green lights facing her when she had approached the junction. On the other side of the street, she slowed her pace to look around her, but there was nothing pink in sight.

Frustrated, she carried on towards the direction she guessed _she_ must have gone. There was too little time to think, _she_ had been so far away from her, she could either give it a wild, if a bit random, chase or lose her in the crowd while she stood still contemplating.

And as long as she kept running, she could at least hope of catching her.

She ran and ran, but she was hampered by all the people in her way, and it was impossible for a woman like her to power her way through the bulky men and the tight-knit groups of tourists which seemed to be more numerous than she had earlier realised.

_A fool's errand, just like my whole journey, chasing a gust of wind, looking for something which would forever elude me._

And there again was a patch of pink way ahead of her, clearly visible among the black-suited men.

Youko fixed her eyes on her target and charged forward with ever more fervour. How she managed to keep her eyes on her target while running like mad and doing a full-fledged slalom around all the mindless obstacles she did not know, because at that very moment it all came naturally to her, and she simply knew that nothing in the world could have stopped her.

Then the blonde-haired head suddenly turned right and disappeared.

Youko's heart stooped. She had just started to close the distance between them, but everything was clouded by a shade of gray once more. Still, she made sure to memorize the exact spot where her own divine being had disappeared, and as she somehow managed to quicken her pace, she was no longer fueled by hope, but by despair.

As she scrambled forward, a distantly unpleasant sensation was welling up in her feet. It could have been pain, she was not sure.

_Bring one feet in front of the other and repeat the process so many times until the hurting feet and the bleeding heart became so numb one could do nothing but carry on even if one suddenly wished otherwise._

The familiar thought popped out of nowhere to her mind, but this time, she was sure she wanted nothing more to carry on.

After an indeterminate amount of time, she arrived at the T-junction where she had last seen _her_. She was on the wrong side of the street, and she crossed it even though the traffic lights had already turned red, not even hearing the angry screech of the car horns.

Now she could fully see Sei in the pink polo shirt and denim shorts. She had not been mistaken. The blonde was not much ahead of her, seemingly gazing at the display window of some small boutique. Youko wanted to shout, but she could find no voice in herself. Instead, she continued running.

This time, she was not running _away_.

But the blonde-haired woman again took a rightward turn. This time, though, Youko's heart did not sink. One last sprint, and she was on the narrow street, and lifting her eyes, she _saw_.

That was when she finally dropped her bag, and with it went every piece of the dam she had built inside her to check her longing that now was free to flood every corner of her mind.

Later, she would have no memories of how she had closed the distance between them. She only remembered the moment when she had literally thrown herself into her lover's arms, and had Sei been an inch shorter or a few pounds lighter, they would have crashed on the ground like two lumps of stone.

Youko wrapped her arms around the blonde woman so tight, and relief surged through her when she felt Sei returning the favour. It was a firework of sensations; the warmth of Sei's body, the tingling on her skin where Sei touched her; the smell of her long lost love, not changed a bit since the last autumn, and indeed not since now almost eleven years ago… Being so much shorter than the other woman, Youko had to lift her head to kiss her. Sei's lips tasted of cheap coffee and some other unpleasant flavour Youko cared not to identify, but she could not imagine drawing away from those lips she had so many times wanted against her own.

Youko pressed her palms on Sei's cheeks and stood on her toes to kiss her harder, and suddenly Sei lifted her in the air and spun her around, all the while their lips being glued to each other.

And Youko imagined how they would fall on the ground, Sei on top of her, and how they would just continue kissing there, until the darkness fell and maybe until the dawn broke again, maybe forever…

**ooo**

Afterwards, Youko figured the chase she had given must have been a longer one than she remebered it to be. It had seemed as if she had only taken two turns or so, but in reality she must have wriggled through several streets during her surreal pursuit. When she tried to recall it, she saw only blurred colours and faceless people, and among them, like a single rose standing proudly erect in the middle of a glacier, a tall, radiating blonde-haired woman.

Yes. Sei was a universe of her own, as a pocket-sized sun with so much heat that she could have saved every freezing person in the world and still there would have been warmth left to share. Maybe it was too pompous to imagine her like that, maybe it was childish, resembling a teenager's mindless crush. But to be a teenager in love was much better than being an adult in despair.

**ooo**

"Your hotel, or mine?"

They were holding hands.

"Mine", Youko replied.

A taxi pulled to a stop in front of them, and they went inside.

They were still holding hands.

And so the trip back to the seaside hotel passed. It was a silent journey, and they hardly even looked at each other. It was as if everything inside them had been poured out moments before, leaving no more need for any further displays of emotion. Any small talk to break the silence would have been superfluous; both trusted that the other one understood even without words spoken aloud.

At least, that was how Youko wanted to believe.

Even through her ecstasy, she was afraid. Perhaps the reason they did not look at each other was that Youko was too terrified to do so. The emotional rollercoaster moments ago had been real beyond denial, and it had seemingly left them both in a entranced state, but a single shadow of a darker thought on either of the two women's faces would have broken the spell. Doubt, fear, regret… These days, they were never farther away than around the corner.

But their hands remained locked together, their fingers entwined around each other, and Youko did not relinquish Sei's hand until hours later the eventide cradled them in a calm sleep.


	15. Even Promises Don't Last Forever

Update! Please enjoy, and review of course.

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><p>13.<strong> Even Promises Don't Last Forever<strong>

Even when they were back in Youko's hotel room, lying in the same single bed with their shoulders touching, Youko could make herself speak. Maybe when there was too much to say one simply could not decide from where to start, or maybe she was still afraid of breaking the magic that tied them together, if ever so precariously. The other woman did not speak, either. They were not openly looking at each other, but Youko tried to steal a glimpse or two of the blonde whenever she thought she could escape the latter's notice.

Sei had aged. The thought, or rather, the fact, was a somewhat terrifying one. There were small lines around her eyes, which were now framed by light, but clearly visible dark rings, and her skin resembled no longer that of a nineteen-year-old, but more than from her physical appearance her age showed in her demeanour and in the air she carried about her. Back in the Yamayurikai, they had been almost immortal, revered by everyone as demigods. But now, ten years later, lying next to each other in an anonymous hotel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they were just two women caught between youth and maturity.

_Two women, who could not even sort out their lives on their own. Two women, who were drawn to each other by a force as unrelenting as gravity, but as gravity compelled the Earth to circle around the Sun, so was it determined for us to ride on the different sides on an eternal carousel, so that try as we might, we would never truly reach each other._

Youko shuddered.

"What's wrong?"

It was strange to at last hear Sei's voice. It sounded surprisingly unfamiliar, yet it pleased Youko's ear, and it pushed aside any brooding thoughts. It was consoling to remember that some things never changed, one of them being how hearing Sei's voice affected her. A few goosebumps erupted on her skin, and an almost imperceptible shiver ran through her spine.

"Nothing, really. Just thinking about something."

She tried to keep her tone casual.

"A penny for your thoughts, then."

"Maybe later."

The blonde woman did not push the topic further, but instead turned on the bed to face Youko and threw her left arm around the latter, as if it had been the most natural thing to do in the world. A voice of surprise escaped from Youko's lips, and after a moment of indecision, she, too, turned on her side to face Sei.

Despite everything, Sei was still as attractive as ever. With her blonde hair, large gray eyes and sharp features, sometimes Youko wondered if she had escaped from some imaginary universe to the real world. But when she unconsciously reached her hand to touch Sei's cheek, she could feel the smoothness against her fingertips, and she could also hear the astonished gasp which now emanated from Sei's shapely mouth. Neither was the warm, tingling sensation in her lower stomach an illusion.

She kissed Sei.

Or maybe it was less a kiss than a quick brush of her lips against Sei's, enough for her to taste the sweetness, but so brief that it left her wanting for more. The scent of instant coffee had faded, and replaced only by alluring moisture and a slight trembling. Youko had meant it to last longer, but the motion had escaped her control and she had withdrawed sooner than she had intended, but in Youko's mind, she was already holding Sei tight in her arms, their lips once again locked together, their tongues tentatively exploring each other…

"Do it again."

It was neither a request nor a command, yet those calm words ignited an irresistible flame inside Youko which relentlessly burned away the last vestiges of her insecurities. Because at least temporarily, she could be certain that what she wanted was exactly what her most long-lasting love desired.

She gave Sei another tentative kiss, and this time, it held so long that it left them both catching their breaths when they finally separated. She had also managed to unbutton Sei's denim shorts, which now were only loosely clinging to the latter's thighs, revealing a few enticing bits of fair skin.

Their lips met again, a tentative affair at first, with Youko carefully nibbling Sei and wrapping her arms gently around the latter. They remained in that indefinite position for some time, Youko not even daring to breathe, let alone take any further initiatives. Too much time had passed for them to be naturally in sync, and she did not want spoil anything by pure rashness.

But then Sei drew her abruptly towards herself, responding to Youko's kiss almost violently and with so much passion, almost raw lust, that it surprised even Youko who had not believed anything could have taken her aback. But something in feeling Sei's tongue inside her mouth and Sei's arms painfully gripping her waist almost frightened her, and she started to wriggle in Sei's embrace, trying to slide her arms to Sei's chest to push the latter away from herself.

Again to Youko's surprise, Sei was as quick to draw back as she had taken hold of her. Pulling her face a few inches away from Youko's, Sei looked at her questioningly, her eyebrows subtly raised.

"I am so sorry."

Sei burst out laughing.

In any other situation it could have been a humiliation for Youko, but now it was a relief to hear Sei laugh so easily, in such a relaxed fashion, without a tinge of irony or bitterness. And there was no reason for her not to do so – Youko's words were more likely to be from some poor movie than from real life. As if an apology would have changed anything between them. As if their connection had not transcended all such weak gestures a long ago.

"That was the lamest thing I've ever heard. Even you should be able to do better than that."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"You know, you just don't go pushing yourself on someone and then changing your mind at the crucial moment."

Sei's tone was gently mocking, and her eyes glinted with a trace of amusement. Maybe behind the mirrorlike surface Youko could see something else, too - a desire to ignore Youko's protests, and a great effort to control herself. Sei had not pulled her arms away from Youko, and her hands were resting on Youko's sides, like predators patiently awaiting the next chance to catch the prey.

"I don't know… It just doesn't make any sense. One moment I am at pains with everything, sitting in front of my computer and wasting away my holiday, and then a couple of hours later, I am here beside you", Youko said quietly, absent-mindedly tracing her fingers around Sei's lips. "I know it sounds cheesy, but I still can't completely believe that this is really happening. There is no reason for you to be here, and even less reason to be here with me. Then again, that is no concern of mine."

Sei snorted, pulling a falsely disappointed face.

"And here I was expecting to get some attention. In vain again, it seems."

"And I would be honored to give you as much attention as you ever might need. I want to embrace you, kiss you, I want to make love to you until you beg me to stop", Youko exhaled, blushing slightly. "But I want to continue doing it for the rest of our lives."

"Well, so do I", Sei replied, grinning.

"I am glad you do."

"But right now, I want to do _this_."

Sei managed to unbutton Youko's blouse halfway before Youko stopped her by gripping Sei's hands in her own.

"You do know that I could not stand us falling apart again, don't you? I don't want to lose you as soon as I have found you again."

"Yes, I know."

Sei pushed Youko's hands aside, and after a few swift movements by the blonde woman Youko was stripped of everything but her underwear. Sei hauled herself to sit on Youko's lap, and she went on to look at the latter with shameless eyes. Youko closed her eyes, but even then she could feel Sei's stare on her exposed body.

How many times have I dreamt of this happening, Youko thought. How many times have I imagined us exactly in this manner, her hungry eyes fixed on my bare skin, waiting to lay her hands on me?

And yet she was not making a single move to yield herself.

"Please…" she murmured, but could not finish her sentence.

Sei was now sliding her hands along Youko's sides, slowly bringing her fingers from Youko's waist to the edges of her loosely-fitting bra, and then tugging them just a little aside to cup Youko's breasts in her hands, which felt soft, so soft, and Youko could not suppress a sigh of pleasure when Sei wormed her fingers around her nipples, and everything was so quickly starting to lose coherence. Youko craved for more, like a addict bereft of narcotics, and a drug indeed Sei was, subtly, yet irrevocably tying Youko's life around her with every touch of her sensuous fingertips. Youko was breathing heavily as sensations she had forgotten even existed clogged her consciousness, and at that moment Youko knew she could have promised her soul to Sei if the latter had wanted it in exchange for the pleasure Youko was experiencing.

"….scream…yet."

Some words were entering her consciousness, but right then it was filled with so much other things that she could not register them properly, and the meaningless sounds were left hanging in the air, and it seemed as if the whole fabric of language was being ripped apart as she could hear the syllables and she could see the woman on top of her speaking, but her brains could not fathom the connection between the two, and with that connection broken, gone was also the system which translated the sounds into words and words into meanings.

She could still hear and acknowledge her own, ecstasy-packed screams. Such primal ways needed little translating. Beyond that, there was only a gigantic emptiness filled with pleasure, a pleasure which intensified with every passing second, with every caress, until the world seemed to implode and explode at the same time, until the confines of time and space became nothing, nothing at all…

**ooo**

"That wasn't too bad, was it?"

Youko could do little else than blush heavily, averting Sei's eyes. Sei was still sitting on her lap, and Youko was sure that her own embarrassment was going to kill her at any moment.

Yes, it had not been too bad, Youko thought. Too good was more like it, and Sei knew it. How could she not, after hearing Youko whine and scream like a lunatic? And it was so like Sei to make such a comment, asserting her superiority in a situation in which there was so little need for it. Just to make sure.

"Yeah, I got it. You win", Youko replied suddenly, and the tinge of genuine irritation in her voice surprised even herself.

"Aren't we touchy, now?" Sei retorted. "Maybe you want me to teach you another lesson?"

Youko was suddenly very cold. Whether it was out of fear or hope, she could not decide.

"Just be silent, please. For once, don't ruin a wonderful moment with your witty remarks."

Sei laughed, smiling crookedly.

"Don't ruin this moment, you say? Well, can you guess what I was thinking just now?"

"Whatever it is, don't tell me."

The impish smile was still toying on Sei's lips.

"You know, it's pretty ridiculous when you think about it, this affair of ours, I mean", she began, still caressing the curves of Youko's naked figure. "We really should not have gotten together last autumn. But we did, and look at what it has put us through. So much pain, so much stress, so many gray hairs. We put in so much effort to chase that what is beyond our reach, this whole Hawaii scenario just being the peak of the iceberg, but for what? What was all the fuss for? Just to have sex? Were we really so deprived of it?"

Every word was like a hammer blow to Youko. Glass shattered, the pristine construction smashed to bits. Little earthquakes. And she cursed herself that she had imagined, she had hoped, she had even been certain that the balance between them could have lasted longer than just a passing moment. But there could be no balance between the sun and the moon, between fire and ice.

"Please, don't tell me such things. I beg you."

Sei shook her head.

"Don't fool yourself, dear. You know I will continue to say such things until the day I die, because that is simply who I am. Just like you will be silent even if your life depended on speaking. I can silence my mouth, but I can't silence my thoughts, and in the end, it won't be enough. We didn't break up for nothing, you know."

The last sentece was so heavy, said with such regret that it nearly reduced Youko to tears.

"I believed it was because I was an idiot, and I still believe it was so."

"I blamed you, too. Until I realised how childish it was to do so. Could I hold your ambition against you? Could I blame you for having your feet tightly on the ground? I guess not."

"I promised you to be there for you, always…"

"You did, with the naivete of a high-school girl. Yes, you were Rosa Chinensis, but you were still only barely eighteen", Sei sighed. " Even promises don't last forever, Youko. Few things do."

The world could have collapsed around Youko, and it would have not felt more cataclysmic. With only a few sentences, the very foundations of her existence seemed to be collapsed. Apart from the remains of her idealism and her belief that whatever had broken between them could be mended, what else did she have to hold on? What did she still have which she had not already thrown away or which had not been taken from her?

"…You say such terrible things, in such an inconsiderate way."

"For what it's worth, I'm lamely sorry. But it always comes down to this, dear. I keep blurting out unpleasant things –"

"…And I keep reprimanding you for it. I keep nagging to you about how you should clean up –"

"…And I keep shrugging and distracting you with my touch."

Their little play was conducted in a perfect rhythm, their understanding complete, one's words fading away with the perfect timing to give way to the other's next line.

If there was something Youko had enjoyed in her relationship with Sei, it had been exactly the way they had been able to perfectly attune to each other, so that right before the end, they hardly needed to speak to understand each other, barely needed to look to see the expression on each other's faces. It had been a total symbiosis, a language stripped of everything but the very essentials.

"I'll go on telling you to get your life organized –"

Youko's voice was on the breaking point.

"…And I'll just sit on front of the TV and grin as if I had not even heard your words."

Back then, it had been a game of theirs to complement each other's words, to create shows from nothing, to fill the tedious moments with witty smiles and light-hearted laughter.

"So is this what you are getting at?" Youko finally blurted, when she could not hold the words inside her anymore. "That we are hopeless? That we are doomed to repeat everything again and again?"

Sei shook her head again, but this time a weary smile crept on her lips.

"Of course not. Nothing is certain in life. I'm only talking about probabilities", she said thoughtfully. "And I don't believe we should concern ourselves much with that part, anyway. I just wanted to get things straight with you, to be on the same line with you, if you know what I mean."

"But…"

Sei interrupted by taking gently hold of Youko's cheeks, and then lowering her own head to nibble gently the latter's ears. Sei being so close, the heat she emanated was starting to purge the doubt worming inside Youko. Sei wrapped herself tighter around Youko, and the black-haired woman found it increasingly hard to concentrate on anything but Sei's warm breath on her earlobes and the firmness of Sei's legs around her own.

"You dummy, what I was trying to say was that all is not lost."

"I can't really see what you are getting at", Youko replied, and even as she said that, embarrassment was beginning to take over her again as it was harder and harder to her to maintain control. It was difficult to keep up her stance when her body was telling her otherwise. "Unless you keep doing this to me, that is."

"That's the spirit", Sei chuckled. "How many days of your holiday you still have?"

"Too few."

"Let's put them into good use, then."

"Let me take off your shirt."

"Why?"

"It feels somehow perverted for me to be the only one naked."

"Ok, ok, I got it. The dirty old man strikes again, and all that."

"Shut up."

"…"

"…"

"You know, dummy… A slim chance is still a chance, isn't it?"


	16. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

The sun was preparing itself to rise, painting the horizon with a shade of red and orange, and I quietly stared as she twisted and turned under her coverlet, her skin showing so enticingly that I could not resist the urge to stroke her. I let my hand slide from her bare shoulders to her neck and then to her hair, and she stirred when my fingertips touched her closed eyelids. Her dark hair was spead around her head like a magical aura, the strands wildly scattered on her sleepy face. I tugged some of her bangs free from her mouth.

"What time is it?" she murmured.

"Early enough for you to continue sleeping", I replied.

Sighing, she turned her back on me and pulled the blanket to cover herself fully again. I continued to stare at her back even after her pace of breathing had evened into a sleeping rhythm.

Maybe it had simply been too long, but I found it strange to see her sleeping beside me just like any other mortal. Even when we had been together, she had always awakened before me, and by the time I had opened my eyes, more often than not she had already cooked coffee and served it to my bed. So, seeing her there now, in such a vulnerable state, it made me want to wrap myself around her, like a mother hen protecting her young ones. I guess I always wanted to see her as my unbreakable rock, something I could always fall against, something which would always stand firm behind me.

But of course, even rocks can be broken, and even the strongest individuals are not without their weak moments. Once, my selfish heart had wanted to believe otherwise. Now, I rejoiced of every moment we could spend next to each other, knowing that what we had could evaporate into nothingness in a split-second.

I hoped she felt as safe as I used to feel when sleeping next to her.

Softly, I rose up and sneaked across the room to the bathroom, where I filled the electric water boiler and put it on. When the water came to boil, I poured myself a cup and took one of the tea bags Youko had left on the table and tipped it in the hot water, until the water became infused with the brown colour. I sat down, facing the window.

It was the moment right before the morning broke out full-throttle, most of the tourists were still sound asleep, and there was a sense of quietness in the air, one I could feel on the surface of my skin. Downtown, the daily hustle and bustle had no doubt already started, but here, I was still captured in the small gap of silence. Youko's wrist watch was lying on the table, and I picked it up, staring as the pointers clinically marked the passing of time. The longest pointer revolved three hundred sixty degrees once, twice, thrice… Minutes passed, the sky on the horizon was getting brighter, the languid dawn was giving way to the hectic morning, and our time together was ticking away, as inevitably as the river flowing into the sea.

But I guess that was the way things were. All things must come to and end, and our surreal holiday was doing so with a pace neither of us truly wanted to follow. I did not want to turn back the clocks, but what I wanted was to stop the passing of time and enjoy the priceless moment just a bit longer. I guess I just wanted to linger in this sense of calm, knowing there was yet not a single concern in my life, and all I needed to do was to look at the dawn and await the awakening of my beautiful lover.

There were still two days left, two days of our dreamlike respite from the harsh reality, two days of ice-cold cocktails, warm sheets and secret glances when we though the other one was not looking. Two days of almost perfect harmony, an existence unburdened by either the past or the future.

I did not really want to think about either.

There was nothing but burnt down houses and ghost towns in our past, and the future was an ocean where I would be sent drifting without an anchor. I tried my best not to dwell upon the insecurities, and I hoped Youko would do the same.

I knew that inside her heart, Youko held hopes of reconciliation. I thought she hoped I would simply move in with her after we left Honolulu, that we could by some divine pact suddenly forget everything what had happened between us and live happily ever after, like a prince and a princess in some fairytale. I told myself I was simply being realist when I dismissed such considerations, but whenever we made love, she would look me in the eye with the same fervour as she had so many years ago, and I could feel my resolve faltering. Because once again would I see the girl who believed that nothing was impossible if one just tried hard enough. Perhaps I was to her now as her shining career as a lawyer had been to her back then. It would have been so easy to relent and let myself be washed away by her willpower, but I maybe I was too much a coward for that. I did not want to be led to the rocks once again, but sometimes I wondered whether a life spent avoiding pain was a life at all.

"Please, come back to bed. I am so cold without you."

**ooo**

There was a certain tranquility in the days we spent together in Hawaii, something unattainable in any other place. The sun burned hot as we lay on the beach, hats on our faces, and we did little else than just space out and concentrate on the most immediate physical sensations. I concentrated on listening the ocean waves, the waves washed away at the shoreline with a calming rhythm, like heartbeats of the sea.

The morning had matured into afternoon too quickly. Time passed fast, like it always did when you did not want it to, but I no longer felt anxious about it. After the current day, there was still tomorrow, and after that, the day after tomorrow.

And when the sun would sink towards the horizon, we would gather our things and head for the nearest bar, drink pina coladas and reminisce about our high school days until midnight, and then we would head back to the hotel. We would make love, and afterwards, when the silence would be absolute, the constellations would shine on us, and the moment would be ours alone, a pristine bubble of time and space in which there would be no pain, no regret…

I took the hat away from my face and turned my head to glance at Youko, and as if she had read my thoughts, she stared right back, smiling, her eyes still as resolutely hopeful as they had been for the past days.

Those dark brown eyes swore to me that she would not let me go. And despite everything, it did not feel wholly unpleasant.

Because I wanted to live my life, not to be afraid of it.

**END**

* * *

><p>AN: Thank you. Everyone who has read this story, everyone who has enjoyed it, everyone who has given me reviews. Writing this fic has been an experience I will not forget. I hope what I have written has pleased those of you who have followed this story right to the end. My own feelings towards this fic are bit chaotic, but I hope I have given at least someone a reading experience he or she has been able to truly enjoy.

I don't know what will happen from now on. I will continue holding Marimite dear in my heart, but about my future as a fanfiction writer I have no ideas whatsoever. I am now engrossed by my original fiction, but I guess I will be trying to do at least some one-shots once in a while. There are pairings I have not yet explored, and I would like to do so, if my schedules only permit and if inspiration is generous enough to present itself to me.

Best wishes and a big thanks once again for everyone,

Glimpse the Unthinkable


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